[HN Gopher] Mozilla has defeated Microsoft's default browser pro...
___________________________________________________________________
Mozilla has defeated Microsoft's default browser protections in
Windows
Author : hadrien01
Score : 730 points
Date : 2021-09-13 12:14 UTC (10 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.theverge.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.theverge.com)
| spodek wrote:
| Mozilla should consider creating an option to switch the whole
| operating system to Linux.
|
| Obviously huge, but for some users maybe not hard. For some users
| welcome.
| chris_wot wrote:
| The only truly crappy part of Windows, IMO, is drive letters
| and ridiculous legacy file system layout. And WinSxS (people
| will disagree with me).
|
| Other than that, it's a robust, well written system.
| tester34 wrote:
| Holy shit I noticed that lately
|
| and thought Windows stopped doing this
| bobbob1921 wrote:
| Keep in mind too- Microsoft is almost at the point of giving
| windows (as an OS) away for free. Whereas in the past they would
| charge around $99 for windows (or less per machine to OEMs).
| Other OSes have forced Microsoft to pretty much give their OS
| away for free.
|
| From a msft/revenue point of view, Microsoft will now feel less
| inhibitions with regard to using windows to drive revenue via
| other Microsoft products. (Ie Windows will now be seen internally
| as a "loss leader" product that must drive revenue via other
| sources such as Bing, edge, office 365 etc)
| tester756 wrote:
| >Whereas in the past they would charge around $99 for windows
|
| When was "the past"? 1990? 2000? 2004?
| bob1029 wrote:
| I would happily pay inflation-adjusted full price for a special
| edition of windows that doesn't treat me like cattle.
|
| How big do we think this market is? Maybe I'm the crazy one
| these days...
| riofoxx wrote:
| T.o a.s.s.i.s.t y.o.u i.n t.r.a.d.e.s f.o.r b.e.t.t.e.r
| i.m.p.r.o.v.e.m.e.n.t on c.r.y.p.t.o.c.u.r.r.e.n.c.y
| W.h.a.t.s.A.p.p (+13052395906)
| rk06 wrote:
| The key point here is that Microsoft has made a way to bypass
| those protections, so that people could switch to Edge from IE
| easily.
|
| Firefox reverse engineered it and implemented it.
|
| I suspect that in windows 11, edge will be set as default
| browser, and the backdoor will be removed :(
| approxim8ion wrote:
| They're not really "protections", to be fair.
| sebazzz wrote:
| They are. Default file associations are protected in Windows 10
| [0][1]. The default browser is in essence also an file
| association.
|
| [0]:
| https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20170517-00/?p=96...
| [1]:
| https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20190724-00/?p=10...
| dralley wrote:
| They are not. This is not some generic "are you sure" prompt,
| it is specifically coded to nag users to use Edge instead.
|
| https://www.itsupportguides.com/wp-
| content/uploads/Windows10...
| approxim8ion wrote:
| It's one thing to push "protections" on your users because
| you think you know better and they can't navigate their way
| around their devices without ruining them. That's the Apple
| way.
|
| But what Microsoft has done here is push their own product in
| the name of protection. That's much more malicious. To argue
| whether it is a protection because they call it one is
| semantics.
| notRobot wrote:
| Exactly. They're not protections. They're strategies to make it
| harder for non-super-users to change their default browser.
|
| As technical people, it's easy to underestimate just how well
| these tactics that introduce friction work at making "regular"
| folks shurg and say "meh, okay, whatever -- sure, I'll use
| Edge" just because they don't want to repeatedly have to figure
| out how to change their default browser.
| thrower123 wrote:
| Good. The better product will win out.
|
| If I was working on the Edgeium team, I would beg the Windows and
| Bing people to be less heavy-handed. It's a quality product, but
| the advertising and nudging is souring me.
| ilaksh wrote:
| Why should we have to keep begging them or something? Using
| Linux instead of Windows is a moral issue.
| LeonB wrote:
| Software constantly uses dark patterns and even "well-
| behaved" software asks questions with answers like "yes"
| (large writing) and "maybe later" as the only no option. It's
| completely normalised.
| burnished wrote:
| It's not a realistic answer for the vast majority of users.
| dotancohen wrote:
| Honest question: Why not? What application does "the vast
| majority of users" need that is Windows only, today?
|
| From my experience with family, coworkers, friends, and
| neighbors, the vast majority of people today need a web
| browser. That's it.
| skrebbel wrote:
| You don't, you're not working on Edgium.
| jfk13 wrote:
| Yes, indeed. I do choose to run Edge sometimes, but the
| constant attempts to push or trick me into making it the
| default are really grating.
| squarefoot wrote:
| > The better product will win out.
|
| The more advertised one will win. Chrome is a joke privacy-wise
| compared to Firefox, but at the moment the winner is Chrome.
| Also the target audience is important: to the average Windows
| user, if Microsoft says Edge is best, then Edge is best, and
| Mozilla has no resources to fight back on equal terms since
| it's Microsoft deciding what runs on their operating system and
| what their users read or watch.
| colinmhayes wrote:
| No one outside this website cares about privacy.
| saagarjha wrote:
| That is not true. Public polling indicates that most people
| do care about privacy, but are unaware of how software
| tracks them, or when aware, feel powerless to change
| anything.
| lacksconfidence wrote:
| I'm sure I have a biased view, but i hear people care
| about privacy in the same way they care about leaving
| facebook. They would like to, in a purely theoretical
| manner, but they aren't willing to change anything about
| their life to get that effect. It seems like many people
| only care enough about privacy to click a button.
|
| Sure some people actually remove facebook, but the
| overwhelming majority of people are voting that they
| prefer the services offered, even with the tradeoffs.
| Unfortunate, but seems likely to me.
| tuankiet65 wrote:
| To be honest, Mozilla isn't the first one here. SetUserFTA
| (https://kolbi.cz/blog/2017/10/25/setuserfta-userchoice-hash-...)
| has been around since 2017, and this pastebin
| (https://pastebin.com/yVhWeQ3X) even predates it.
| userbinator wrote:
| Every time you hear something being done for "security" or
| "protection", think more carefully about what they're actually
| trying to protect or secure. That's something I wish more people
| would do. In this case, it's protection for securing Micro$oft's
| monopoly.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Tangentially related, but I recently spun up a Windows VM and
| used Edge to search Bing for "Firefox" and this is result I
| got[1].
|
| It's a giant banner that says, "You're already browsing in
| Microsoft Edge. Keep using to get world class performance with
| more privacy, more productivity, and more value."
|
| That banner is followed by another giant banner image telling me
| to get "Get Robux using Microsoft Edge. Join Microsoft Rewards
| and use Microsoft Edge. Get a 100 Robux eGift Card on us when you
| search with Microsoft Bing on Microsoft Edge for 5 days after you
| join."
|
| I had to scroll to even see the relevant search results for my
| search term. I'm assuming most non-power users won't scroll
| because they were just assured that they were "already browsing
| in Microsoft Edge", which is apparently more private, productive
| and valuable than what they intended to search for.
|
| [1] https://i.imgur.com/blHGMgX.png
| liamwire wrote:
| Ostensibly this is the exact opposite function one wants out of
| a search tool, obscuring results. For Microsoft to design such
| an egregious UX for one of their key platforms, the incentives
| must be staggering. Calling this a dark pattern doesn't go far
| enough, in my opinion. It's outright user-hostile.
| iamAtom wrote:
| Imagine how many decisions were made similar to this at the cost
| of smooth user experience. This is why windows or any MS products
| will never be my favourite because user experience takes back
| seat mostly.
| sealeck wrote:
| I may be wrong (I am not a lawyer) but I suspect that if
| Microsoft prevent Mozilla from doing this, Mozilla may be able to
| win a lawsuit (probably not in the US, but in the EU seems
| likely) arguing that it is anti-competitive to restrict defaults
| in this way. See judgements against Google for similar
| restrictions on Android.
| tyingq wrote:
| Somewhat related, also see "EdgeDeflector":
| https://github.com/da2x/EdgeDeflector
|
| It's a really handy utility to force windows to actually use your
| default browser in spaces where it currently forces Edge. You've
| probably seen this opening links from other Microsoft products
| where Edge unexpectedly pops up. Like from MS widgets on your
| toolbar, some links within MS Teams, etc.
| nuxi7 wrote:
| I need this, but for all the android apps that are refusing to
| open links in my chosen browser.
| kuschkufan wrote:
| TFA seems to say that Chrome and others don't yet do it like
| Firefox does. If this really turns out to be an advantage watch
| the others copying the reverse-engineered code. I assume you
| could look it up in the Firefox repo now?
| wyattpeak wrote:
| I think it's very likely Firefox want everybody to copy them.
| This is a fight best fought with everyone against Windows, and
| it's no particular skin off Firefox's nose if Chrome is also
| easy to use: since Chrome is basically the default non-Edge
| browser, everybody choosing Firefox is already aware of Chrome
| and has decided against it.
| trident5000 wrote:
| Sounds anti-competitive on Microsoft's part.
| p_j_w wrote:
| "A tiger's never gonna change its stripes."
| squarefoot wrote:
| Wait a minute. Firefox is Open Source; wasn't Microsoft in love
| with Open Source? (their words) So it appears they are only when
| they don't smell competition.
|
| One of the reasons why I'm extremely worried by whatever they're
| planning to do with Linux.
| trutannus wrote:
| > whatever they're planning to do with Linux.
|
| Why? Microsoft does not own Firefox or Linux? If you don't use
| MS products then you're not going to be subject to their
| choices.
| p_j_w wrote:
| They don't need to own it to EEE it.
| trutannus wrote:
| Triple E?
| aembleton wrote:
| Embrace, extend, and extinguish - https://en.wikipedia.or
| g/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
| wasmitnetzen wrote:
| Related bugzilla entries:
|
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1637357
|
| https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1703578
|
| Apparently, the new one-click method is called UserChoice.
| userbinator wrote:
| "UserChoice" - what a doublespeak name.
|
| It's been there since Win8 or so, and defeated just as long
| ago:
|
| https://danysys.com/set-file-type-association-default-applic...
|
| http://kolbi.cz/blog/2017/10/25/setuserfta-userchoice-hash-d...
|
| (Note the messages about "fixed false positive from Windows
| Defender"...)
| Strom wrote:
| The new Windows 11 defaults manager is amazingly user hostile.
| [1] Microsoft decided it's a great idea to make non technical
| users manually adjust 15 different file and protocol associations
| in order to change the default browser.
|
| Microsoft's statement on this: _we are implementing customer
| feedback to customize and control defaults at a more granular
| level, eliminating app categories and elevating all apps to the
| forefront of the defaults experience_.
|
| More granular control is nice and all, but I don't buy for a
| second that it couldn't be behind some "advanced" button. I think
| the most probable explanation for removing the app categories is
| a calculated move to steer people towards Microsoft products
| which have access to backdoor internal functions to change all of
| these automatically.
|
| I do remember how bad things were back in Windows XP days when
| every random toolbar would change all the associations. I don't
| wish for that experience to come back for non technical users
| either. Microsoft could perhaps look into allowing digitally
| signed apps to change the associations automatically (a single
| summarizing OS confirmation prompt might be wise), and non-signed
| apps would have to instruct users to manually change things.
|
| --
|
| [1] https://www.theverge.com/22630319/microsoft-
| windows-11-defau...
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| It's a dark pattern, it reminds me of the cookie banner opt-out
| flows where they make it intentionally overly complicated.
|
| I hope the EU sues them again over this. Same with the cookie
| banner, by law there should be a single click 'no thanks'
| button.
| jareklupinski wrote:
| that's pretty much their MO: keep pushing the envelope until
| you get sued, then take 2 steps back and start again
| hef19898 wrote:
| It would be great if they took two steps, sometimes I think
| they don't even tale a half step back, instead they just
| stop where they are for sometime.
| danudey wrote:
| I appreciate the way MacOS handles these sorts of things:
| Applications can say "I am a browser!" and then the user can
| choose their preferred default from a drop-down. Also works for
| e-mail and FTP clients, as well as possibly others.
| wibagusto wrote:
| > we are implementing customer feedback to customize and
| control defaults at a more granular level
|
| Implementing customer feedback? Are they too retarded to do
| their job by themselves?
|
| Yeah yeah downvote my foul language--I'm sick of these slimy
| fucks dodging questions and obviously implementing dark
| patterns.
| xdfgh1112 wrote:
| Of course it's calculated. Try putting Chrome/Google search on
| a fresh install of Windows and see how many times you are one
| click away from being reverted back to Edge/Bing. It must be
| over a dozen
| slaymaker1907 wrote:
| On a related note, I find it really frustrating that I can't
| just select a default text editor. I even want to use a MS
| product, VS Code, but there is not really an easy way to tell
| Windows to use VS Code for all text files.
|
| Really what I would like is a two step association list. Be
| able to specify what category a particular file type is under
| (i.e. text file, web browser file, etc.) as well as specifying
| which text file or web browser should be used in general.
| Obviously many file types only need a direct association with
| an application, but that is not always the case and as is the
| case with text files, it may not be possible for an application
| installer to know all extensions it needs to associate with
| itself.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I seem to remember a checkbox during install for this. Though
| if you use winget/chocolatey, unsure of how to do it after
| the fact.
|
| Though, 99% of my VS code use is launched from terminal
| anyway, and I can always right-click. That said, the Win11
| right-click menu buries most of the options.
| deadbunny wrote:
| I recently gave a friend my old PC, I installed Windows,
| updated it then did a factory reset so they could go through
| the first run setup themselves. Watching them set the machine
| up and blindly agreeing to all telemetry without even blinking
| really opened my eyes to how much "normal" people dont care
| about telemetry.
|
| The great irony here is that we - technical people - have done
| this to ourselves. We opt out of telemetry (as we should IMO)
| as a default so out usage patterns never get sent to the
| mothership. So of course Windows gets dumbed down, options
| disappear, and the OS gets targeted at the normal folk.
|
| I have no horse in this race to be fair as a linux user but I
| do find it amusing.
| BitwiseFool wrote:
| I am so comfortable with personal computers that I take it
| for granted how intimidating the setup can be for the average
| Joe and Jane. Telling someone to change which app handles a
| certain file extension is like a mechanic telling me how to
| adjust one of the valves inside of a carburetor. Certainly
| do-able, but a nightmare to someone who thinks they can break
| the whole thing with one wrong move.
| hef19898 wrote:
| I have my first Linux machine since this weekend, and I
| really love how that feels _a lot_ like old school Windows.
| Just an OS running on your own hardware, no calling home, no
| cloud, no account somewhere if I don 't want to. And
| surprisingly easy to install as well, again not really more
| difficult than, say, setting up Windows XP yourself. or
| Windows 2000.
|
| It is really quite refreshing to have some of the freedom
| from the "old days" back. Honestly, I don't think I'll go
| back for private usage. Work is different, a) because
| employers provide hard- and software and b) because Office
| 365 is quite good for corporate use.
| antisthenes wrote:
| > The great irony here is that we - technical people - have
| done this to ourselves. We opt out of telemetry (as we should
| IMO) as a default so out usage patterns never get sent to the
| mothership. So of course Windows gets dumbed down, options
| disappear, and the OS gets targeted at the normal folk.
|
| There's no irony here. Even if every single technically apt
| user sent their feedback to Microsoft at once, it would still
| be drowned out by the 99% of the general population that
| clicks through everything without reading or adjusting.
|
| It's not even close, and we shouldn't be giving MS the
| benefit of the doubt anymore, considering what they've done
| to Windows in the last 10 years. They did it deliberately,
| while hiding behind "improving user experience" and
| "security".
| newsbinator wrote:
| Heck people default to donating their organs if that's the
| option that's preset when they register for a driving
| license. Or the reverse if that's the option that's preset.
| It's not even close: whatever is the default option, no
| matter how serious, the vast majority of people seem to
| shrug and get on with their day.
| DiabloD3 wrote:
| I used to share your belief, but as I got older, I realized...
| Windows isn't targeted to us, the faux technocratic elite that
| grew up with computers: it's targeted to the average person,
| and the average person, largely, is technologically illiterate
| to some degree.
|
| You cannot get file/uri associations correct in a UX in a way
| that handles _all_ situations. Essentially, this is a subset of
| the "many to many relations in database tables fundamentally
| suck" problem, and every time this happens where it is directly
| exposed to the user it has never turned out well.
|
| Combine the potential UI/UX nightmare of this _with_ literal
| actual criminals putting malware on the PCs of technologically
| illiterate users: it now hijacks 15 different file /uri
| associations in ways that are not easily fixed.
|
| What Microsoft _should_ do? Do an Android-style ask (yes, the
| one that all the people like us hate) every time a new handler
| can be associated. What they can 't do? Expressly this because
| it didn't exist in Win98 when they added uri handler system to
| the existing file handler system, and Microsoft is obsessed
| with backwards compat.
|
| Side note: Technically, Firefox _could_ trigger the OTHER
| existing API for this that UWP apps are forced to use as per MS
| Store sandboxing, from the C++ WinRT API; any app could. It isn
| 't well documented, and isn't the intended use _but_ WinUI 3.x
| 's path is allowing apps to piecemeal their way into the future
| without all-or-nothing rewrites. I'm not going to insult
| Mozilla by saying they "choose not to", I'd rather someone else
| jump in the deep end first on that.
|
| How Microsoft ended up fixing the _actual issue at hand_?
| Removing the need to get another browser in the first place,
| but still allowing technologically literate users to install
| one if they want. Edge is Chrome, but without the boneheaded
| decisions Google makes ruining it, and actually moving forwards
| in usability.
|
| Edge has vertical tabs built in, it has an actually visually
| correct dark theme built in[1], has the existing
| bookmark/history/open tab/etc syncing (which some Chromium-
| based browsers still do not, as they have to write their own
| backend), it has an Android version (many desktop Chromium
| browsers do not have a matching phone version), it has the
| beginnings of a ABP/uBlock style ad blocker built in (its
| already in the Android version as well) (Chrome will _never_
| ship with adblocking built in, Google 's entire business model
| depends on their ad network), its the first Chromium-based
| browser that supports the VBS-based hardware-enforced browser
| sandbox (Microsoft wants to bring it to all Chromium-based
| things including Electron apps), and it also has tab
| collections built in (which is also supported on the Android
| version), and last but not least, they have an actually working
| PWA container on the desktop (reviving the code Google killed
| because they didn't want a future where Android couldn't be a
| vendor lock-in moat).
|
| The number of extensions I need to make Edge actually
| productive is less than any other browser.
|
| You know what Mozilla brought me? Panorama, which is now gone.
| An extension system that could actually deeply modify the UI
| (thanks to XUL), which is now gone (and has been replaced with
| a partial WebExtension implementation). A PWA-first OS, called
| FirefoxOS, that would be lighter and faster than Android by
| several magnitudes, which is now gone. An Electron alternative
| that used Gecko instead, called Positron, also gone. A PWA
| container for the desktop called Prism, also dead.
|
| Almost everything Mozilla thought of, half-assed, and then
| killed, Edge has succeeded, and brought to not only Windows,
| but OSX, Linux, and Android too, and also salvaged the slowly
| rotting Chromium codebase at the same time.
|
| [1]: Dark themes _should never_ have backgrounds darker than
| 16, as the eye has poor "bright on dark" focusing, but most
| monitors, even ones being sold today, have very poor tracking
| of values below the limited 16-240 range (even HDR monitors);
| the two of those together make standard viewing conditions
| (dimly lit office or indirect sunlight lit room or single 60W
| equivalent on a desk in a small bedroom, with a 100 nits
| monitor (sRGB defines optimal brightness as 80 nits + offset
| for ambient, BT1886 defines SDR white as 100 if not otherwise
| calibrated, BT2020 defines SDR content in HDR display mode as
| 100)) hard to read for standard distance and DPI monitors (ex:
| 24" 1080p or 27" 1440p at ~29 inches, given a 1.2 ratio of
| screen size to distance) at the standard text size (16px).
|
| Dark themes that have pure black for misguided reasons should
| be eradicated for user accessibility reasons; contrast and
| readability are very important for everyone, not just people
| with diagnosed vision problems.
| [deleted]
| badRNG wrote:
| > I used to share your belief, but as I got older, I
| realized... Windows isn't targeted to us, the faux
| technocratic elite that grew up with computers: it's targeted
| to the average person, and the average person, largely, is
| technologically illiterate to some degree.
|
| I mean, the average user has been capable of installing and
| using alternative browsers for a significant period of time.
| Most folks exist as some shade of gray between your Grandma
| with an Ask toolbar and the "HN elites." If anything, I think
| there is often an _underestimation_ of what regular users
| understand and are willing to do with their tech (to improve
| their experience, privacy, etc.) If you need some sort of a
| sanity check, see how your friends and peers (that don 't
| work in software) configure their systems. See what browsers
| they use, what adblockers they configure, etc. I predict
| you'd be surprised.
|
| I rarely meet this "average user" who is often discussed on
| HN; this person who isn't interested in using non-standard
| software, who doesn't care at all about their privacy, who
| will use only the easiest and cheapest solution possible,
| etc. Dark patterns don't just work on these "average users,"
| they work on plenty who even work in tech. I click "Accept
| All" on the cookie banner on this one-off website if it's the
| fastest way to read the contents, I will put off changing
| default apps if I have to hunt for the correct settings, heck
| I've been charged for subscriptions an extra month because I
| put off dealing with the hassle of cancelling the thing.
|
| I think this "average user" is constructed in the collective
| imagination because it makes implementing user-hostile design
| choices a little more conscionable if you view your users as
| tech illiterate morons. Considering the state of the
| industry, one where dark patterns and user hostility permeate
| nearly every design choice, it doesn't surprise me that HN, a
| subset of this industry, holds this dim view of its users.
| wibagusto wrote:
| Honestly the way I look at it, these issues all have such a
| simple solution. The user experience can be so much better,
| but MSFT does not want that. They want a confusing
| experience that pretends they aren't monopolizing their
| platform.
|
| Even if the lowest common denominator can navigate the
| settings (eventually) it's still not an excuse to make
| shitty UX paradigms. This is a company with some of the
| best and brightest engineers--and we're on three decades of
| Windows... and they can't figure out how to design a proper
| defaults page? Come on.
| mtVessel wrote:
| Sorry, I disagree.
|
| > If you need some sort of a sanity check, see how your
| friends and peers (that don't work in software) configure
| their systems
|
| Everyone I know who doesn't work in tech "configures" their
| system by calling me and saying, "it doesn't work" (no
| other details provided), and asking if I can just fix it.
|
| > I rarely meet this "average user"...who isn't interested
| in using non-standard software...doesn't care about
| privacy...will use only the easiest and cheapest solution
|
| Consider yourself lucky, and consider the circles you
| travel in are may not be reflective of the majority of
| users.
| badRNG wrote:
| Everyone's anecdotes will be different (and may differ
| along generational lines.) For a more concrete example of
| users seeking non-standard software, within a few years
| of it coming out Chrome became the most popular desktop
| web browser, surpassing IE. People perferred the
| experience on Chrome over that on IE to a considerable
| degree. On the privacy front, 96% of users opt out of
| surveillance-based advertising [1] when empowered to do
| so.
|
| The longer we consider concepts like user freedom and
| privacy as only things that "HN elites" would appreciate,
| the more tolerable user-hostile design choices will be
| among HN types.
|
| [1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/05/96-of-us-
| users-opt-o...
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| I use dark themes with pure black backgrounds precisely
| _because_ it maximizes contrast and increases accessibility.
| I don 't understand your dislike for them and desire to
| eradicate them, especially when they can exist alongside grey
| dark themes (as is commonly the case with Android apps).
| Miraste wrote:
| "Open all browser file types in a single browser I select" is
| good enough for both the average user and the "technocratic
| elite" in basically all cases, and there are certainly zero
| cases where choosing every file association manually is
| better for someone who doesn't know what they're doing.
|
| I don't understand your complaint about Firefox's dark mode;
| I've been using it for years and I don't remember any pure
| black elements. And as far as extensions, Firefox may be
| missing a couple minor APIs but it's the only browser that
| doesn't block the important ones (e.g. the ones uBlock Origin
| needs) so ad companies can make more money.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| > _Panorama, which is now gone._
|
| It was removed from the core browser because they reached the
| point where it could be entirely implemented in an extension,
| and also wasn't as popular as they'd hoped. ... it should
| then be noted that it can no longer be _perfectly_
| implemented in a WebExtensions world; there are some
| compromises that need to be made, comparatively minor is my
| impression but I don't use it (I used Panorama at first, but
| found before long that multiple windows and Tree Style Tab
| was more useful to me).
|
| > _An extension system that could actually deeply modify the
| UI (thanks to XUL), which is now gone (and has been replaced
| with a partial WebExtension implementation)._
|
| Replaced for entirely legitimate performance reasons, even if
| you ignore the security and maintainability arguments. As
| with many things, it's a balance. So long as userChrome.css
| still works, I'm fairly OK with where things lie.
|
| > _Firefox OS, Positron, Prism_
|
| Sigh. Yeah. I'd count XULRunner here too. I won't comment on
| Firefox OS or Prism, but I believe a substantial reason in
| the killing of XULRunner and Positron is that they were too
| hard to maintain and held progress on Firefox back.
|
| > _Almost everything Mozilla thought of, half-assed, and then
| killed, Edge has succeeded_
|
| It's funny how these things go: an early implementer before
| its time, and then later something else reinvents much the
| same thing but actually succeeds at it. The first two
| examples of this that my mind always springs to are actually
| both Microsoft: HTA, which was basically Electron lite, but
| in _1999_ ; and tablet PCs in the mid-2000s, that quite
| flopped because the hardware wasn't quite right yet, and so
| Microsoft abandoned the space and licked their wounds for
| another decade before returning (with the iPad and Android
| tablets having occupied the space, including things like
| ASUS's Eee Pad Transformers).
|
| And the related phenomenon of cycles like how OSes used to be
| all colour-customisable, then they steadily lost that, then
| eventually they all added dark modes back in again, treating
| it as something all new and never-before-seen.
|
| > _Dark themes_
|
| You're subscribing to the common fallacy that dark themes are
| just one thing. The fact of the matter is that there are
| actually several substantially different types of dark modes.
| This is theory I've been mulling over for the last few years;
| I've vacillated between reckoning three and four types and
| exactly where to draw lines, but I'm currently going with
| four: 1 aesthetic, which is fairly low contrast and certainly
| avoids true black and white; 2 accessibility, which is high
| contrast in both colours and styles (that is, no gentle
| gradients, just harsh boundaries between colours), and uses
| true black and white--note here that light accessibility mode
| is much more likely to be useful than dark accessibility
| mode, but both have a place; 3 low-light, which uses true
| black and mostly fairly bright whites up to and including
| true white, but is not scared of in-between colours or
| actively _trying_ for super-high contrast; and 4 power-saver,
| which is largely for things like OLED panels, where true
| black definitely uses less power and can look _great_ , and
| certainly not for TN LCD panels where true black tends to
| look awful. Which type of dark mode is most appropriate
| depends on the user's eyesight, the device screen type, the
| ambient lighting conditions, the nature of the content being
| presented, user preference, and power availability.
| inter_netuser wrote:
| Why is Firefox marketshare so low?
| pomian wrote:
| Maybe it is not as low as it appears. Since most of the
| privacy settings are the default, installs and usage isn't
| counted?
| deadbunny wrote:
| I'm pretty sure browser share is done by useragent, which
| will report Firefox if you're using Firefox. Unless of
| course you change your useragent but the number of people
| doing that will be vanishingly small.
| deadbunny wrote:
| my experience with HN usage is that "its not as fast as
| chrome" or "the dev tools arent as good as chrome".
|
| My experience with "normal" people; we the nerds told them to
| install chrome 10 years ago and now they are used to it.
|
| Personally I use Firefox and have done since it came out as
| it's fast enough for me and I'm not a front-end dev so the
| dev tools suit my limited use.
| random_ind_dude wrote:
| Mostly because of a multi-billion dollar ad campaign by a
| megacorp whose name rhymes with Moogle.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Android happened and combined with a popular desktop Chrome,
| well the rest is history.
| tomComb wrote:
| Not sure you can really blame android, when Android allows
| Firefox as a first class replacement for Chrome and with
| ease for the user, whereas iOS doesn't even allow the real
| Firefox.
|
| iOS is a very important platform for Firefox, so apples
| anti-competitive behavior in this regard really undermines
| firefox's future.
|
| I'm very sad that this issue has not come up in all of the
| debate about the app store.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| ~98% of Androids use the default browser, which is an
| incredible amount of people, like in the billions. We
| tend to forget iOS is a minority worldwide.
| dralley wrote:
| >Not sure you can really blame android, when Android
| allows Firefox as a first class replacement for Chrome
|
| It's still the default, and defaults matter.
| cm2187 wrote:
| But what makes it even worse is that Microsoft overrides your
| choice frequently on OS updates, which means you will need to
| repeat all these manual steps not just for each machine, but
| also for each major OS update. And you can't script it.
| otikik wrote:
| If I'm reading this correctly, it can be scripted. It's just
| that the API that does it isn't public.
| pxeboot wrote:
| We have been scripting it for years with this utility:
| https://kolbi.cz/blog/2017/10/25/setuserfta-userchoice-
| hash-...
| msoucy wrote:
| Microsoft just forced all of their office suite file
| extensions to look at their MS Office... which I don't
| (shouldn't) have installed. I happily use LibreOffice. But
| suddenly things are going to different apps!
|
| User Friendly, as long as by "friendly" you mean "actively
| sabotaging"
| alpaca128 wrote:
| That's happening on my dad's new laptop as well - he still
| uses his MS Office 2013 license because why not, but even
| after many attempts we couldn't figure out a way to make
| Windows open double-clicked files in that old Office. It
| would always pop up the newest unactivated test version.
| And before that it took a while until the OS even listed
| the programs in the start menu. MS literally fights its own
| software when you don't pay the annual 365 ransom.
| luminous231 wrote:
| This was happening to me after a system restore.
| Uninstalling all other versions of office on my computer,
| then rebooting and changing the default program to Office
| 13 worked for me.
| davidjade wrote:
| I see this statement repeated often but I have never had this
| happen - not even once. I use Windows Pro and don't do
| anything special either, I just apply Windows updates. If
| this is happening, I wonder why it is not happening to me.
| kijin wrote:
| I use the Professional edition too, and Windows resets my
| default image viewer and PDF viewer every now and then. Not
| sure if it's related to Windows updates, though. IIRC the
| resets are correlated more with one of those apps updating
| itself and Windows no longer trusting it with the defaults
| it had been previously granted.
| minhazm wrote:
| Just speculation but perhaps the way the installers work
| makes it appear to Windows that the app was uninstalled
| first and then a new version is installed. If it looks
| like it was uninstalled then I can see why Windows might
| change the default.
| cm2187 wrote:
| That's a tempting explanation except that in my case it
| appears after OS upgrades.
| kymaz wrote:
| Which feels quite amateurish and thus ridiculous for
| Microsoft. Like, they invent a new app store in Windows
| 10 and they still can't even be bothered to implement a
| working update routine that isn't infuriating to end
| users?
| drdaeman wrote:
| I honestly don't remember any details but this had happened
| to me once, about 1.5 or 2 years ago, where a major W10Pro
| update had somehow reset the default browser to Edge. It
| was just a normal bi-annual update, however it could be
| that I've installed manually using Windows Update Assistant
| without waiting for the normal rollout.
| Rd6n6 wrote:
| I dual boot. Once a year or so, windows update trashes my
| boot loader and makes me do a grub repair in order be able
| to boot into ubuntu again. It's inconvenient for me, but
| amateur Linux users could really panic and think it was
| Linux's fault
| andrewmackrodt wrote:
| This used to happen to me with the quarterly? version
| increments but hasn't been the case for a couple of years
| now. I even upgraded from W10 to W11 and was pleasantly
| surprised that grub was left intact, i.e. as the default
| boot manager.
| gigel82 wrote:
| Same, I never had Windows Update change defaults. This is
| one of those urban legends that is only very loosely based
| in fact (KB3135173 back in 2016 indeed had a bug that reset
| defaults, afaik it never happened since) but keeps
| persisting.
|
| It's the same with ads; everyone claims Window 10 shows ads
| but I never saw any ads and I doubt it even has the
| capability of downloading and displaying random ads. It
| does occasionally show "recommendations" for using its apps
| (like Edge or Teams) and I guess if you squint really hard
| you could call those "ads", but I never saw an actual
| advertisement for some 3rd party website or product or
| anything of the sorts.
|
| Yes, Windows 10 is bloated and the fact MS refuses to
| release a SKU with fully opt-out telemetry is bad, but this
| kind of hyperbole rubs me the wrong way.
| jjoonathan wrote:
| Urban legend? Every time Windows updates I have to go
| into the Sound settings to disable the low-quality
| bluetooth endpoint on my headphones, because it is the
| default option and every update clears my selection and
| reestablishes the default.
| gigel82 wrote:
| I agree that can be annoying; did you try submitting a
| bug report?
|
| I sent one once through their "Send Feedback" thing and
| someone actually got back to me (several months later,
| but still).
|
| FWIW, I'm using wireless headphones that have the same 2
| options (for calls and for "gaming") but never had the
| issue you're describing (though they're not Bluetooth,
| they come with a custom usb dongle).
| unstatusthequo wrote:
| Every time my wife's work computer updates, it changes
| the default PDF viewer from Adobe Acrobat to Microsoft
| Edge.
| davidjade wrote:
| I really do wonder what causes the unevenness of this.
| For me, I installed Foxit reader and it's always stayed
| my default. I also switch .txt files to open in Notepad++
| and it has always stayed the default too. I've changes a
| lot of file extensions over the years and they always
| stuck through all the Windows updates, etc... I've never
| used any version of Edge as my main browser nor has it
| ever become the default for anything automatically. I may
| have been prompted to try it during an upgrade welcome
| screen but I've always said no and it's never bothered me
| again.
| cartoonfoxes wrote:
| A/B testing has been de-rigueur on the web for a very
| long time now. What makes you think Microsoft aren't
| playing the same tricks?
| vic-traill wrote:
| In my experience, this is Edge updates doing this.
| admax88qqq wrote:
| There 100% are ads for third party apps in the default
| start menu.
|
| I've seen ads for Bejeweled, Farmville, and Twitter,
| before I disabled them all.
| gigel82 wrote:
| You'd have to stretch the definition of ads quite a lot
| for those to fit. At worst, they'd be bloatware (but IIRC
| they're not even pre-installed apps, just stubs that link
| to the store that you can simply remove permanently).
| Still in bad taste and those should not show up
| especially in Pro SKU.
|
| An ad would be a banner that shows up when you open the
| Start menu with "meet singles near you" or "try ubereats"
| or "buy Chevrolet cars" or some other bullshit of that
| sorts.
| design-material wrote:
| No.
|
| A third-party paying to have a small poster ('Tile') that
| shows + links to their product is the very definition of
| an ad.
| ziml77 wrote:
| > I guess if you squint really hard you could call those
| "ads"
|
| I don't think those are nearly as bad as ads for third
| party products and services, but they're still ads.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| Windows 10 reinstalled "Candy Crush Soda Saga" on my
| machine multiple times during updates, so it's absolutely
| not just first-party software like Edge and Teams that
| they've pushed.
| davidjade wrote:
| Not doubting you but that is so weird. I deleted it (and
| a few other apps) once on that first install of Win 10
| and it has never come back. I've never used any tool to
| disable or clean anything, etc... Just removed the apps
| through supported means.
| wlesieutre wrote:
| It shouldn't happen anymore, but what kind of braindead
| update system didn't check for that in the first place?
|
| _> One of the ongoing feedback items we've heard is how
| the apps that come preinstalled with Windows will
| reinstall after each upgrade - particularly noticeable
| for our Insiders that receive multiple flights per month.
| We've heard your feedback, and starting with Build 14926,
| when your PC updates it will check for apps that have
| been uninstalled, and it will preserve that state once
| the update has completed. This means if you uninstall any
| of the apps included in Windows 10 such as the Mail app
| or Maps app, they will not get reinstalled after you
| update to a newer build going forward._
|
| "Oops, we totally forgot to consider that any users would
| want to uninstall this bloatware, so we just included it
| again as part of each update. And definitely no one
| inside our organization had personally uninstalled Candy
| Crush, pointed out this problem, and had their concerns
| ignored because we wanted to maximize the number of
| installs that our partners are paying us for. User
| experience is our highest priority, and what're you going
| to do about it, switch to Linux?"
|
| https://blogs.windows.com/windows-
| insider/2016/09/14/announc...
| hef19898 wrote:
| So MS turned Windows into the device OEM bloatware
| infested version of stock Android, combined with Google
| level tracking. Nice. I guess corporate customers are
| treated different, at least my commercial Windows
| liscense and my work-laptop has no bloatware worth
| mentioning.
| tomComb wrote:
| And it's not just candy crush - there are many bloatware
| that it would let you uninstall and then silently
| reinstall them soon after.
|
| To me, that is a whole new level of slime. Even for
| Windows, that shocked me.
| tester756 wrote:
| Same here
| DelightOne wrote:
| Microsoft will never change.
| StreamBright wrote:
| I guess it just shows how much Microsoft is user focused.
|
| The only reason why I was not using Windows was that it did not
| have enough user options.
| syshum wrote:
| If only we had actual Anti-Trust enforcement, because this is
| EXACTLY what they got wrist slapped for in the 90's
| nvrspyx wrote:
| > More granular control is nice and all, but I don't buy for a
| second that it couldn't be behind some "advanced" button.
|
| In fact, they could've just kept it the same as Windows 10
| because this exact system was under "Choose defaults by app",
| along with a "Choose defaults by protocol" option, at the
| bottom of the defaults apps pane.
|
| Windows 11 is a step back from more granular control
| considering there is no longer the option to change defaults by
| protocol. Instead, you need to go through multiple apps to see
| which protocols each app supports rather than going straight to
| the protocol/file type you want to change the default for.
| bryanrasmussen wrote:
| >Windows 11 is a step back from more granular control
| considering there is no longer the option to change defaults
| by protocol. Instead, you need to go through multiple apps to
| see which protocols each app supports rather than going
| straight to the protocol/file type you want to change the
| default for.
|
| haven't had a Windows machine for a couple years so I'm
| wondering - is there still a registry and are protocols still
| registered in it? I'm obviously not thinking about everyday
| users going through that to change permissions, just thinking
| about me.
| warning26 wrote:
| Windows 10's version was definitely better, but it still had
| its own brand of sketchiness.
|
| Specifically, they had chosen a window size that placed the
| "default web browser" selector conveniently scrolled off the
| bottom. It would _never_ be scrolled into view by default,
| even if the defaults control panel had been explicitly opened
| for the purpose of setting a default browser.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| Oh there were definitely dark patterns, especially if you
| add in the "Microsoft Edge is the recommended browser for
| Windows 10" or whatever was displayed when you tried to
| change the default browser.
|
| My only point is that, even by their own logic, it's a step
| backwards, which makes the stated reason seem like straight
| up deceit.
| whatshisface wrote:
| It baffles me that Microsoft cares what browser people use;
| Edge is based on Chromium and Edge's user count confers
| absolutely no authority over web standards (one of the
| major things Google gets from making Chromium) to
| Microsoft.
| jefftk wrote:
| Why doesn't control of Edge give Microsoft a say in web
| standards? They are not just a Chrome reskin: they can
| and do add features that Google doesn't like or hasn't
| prioritized, etc.
| trelane wrote:
| "based on" is very different from "is", especially when
| the source isn't copyleft.
| admax88qqq wrote:
| If there's a decent chance that the web is the future,
| would you really let yourself be cut out as a platform,
| considering you _are_ a platform?
|
| Gotta hedge your bets.
| skymt wrote:
| Edge defaults to Bing for searches, which is a direct
| source of revenue via ads. Edge also uses browser history
| for ad targeting via the "personalize your web
| experience" option; I don't recall whether that's enabled
| by default but I'd expect it is. On top of those there's
| a price-comparison feature (affiliate revenue) and a
| Pinterest partnership.
| delusional wrote:
| No more than a year ago the little "help" icon in
| explorer linked to bing with a prefilled search query
| that didn't even include a guard to make sure only
| microsoft.com results were returned (that has since been
| fixed). The results were (predictably) full of blog spam.
|
| Microsoft was deliberately showing blog spam, just to
| route users to bing. I can't understand how that's a good
| business model.
| [deleted]
| chriscjcj wrote:
| Meanwhile, Firefox released version 57 that killed most of their
| extensions and add-ons. Then it imposed terrible changes to their
| UI that you can't change with the new extensions. Want tabs below
| the address bar? Too bad. Github now has numerous projects for
| re-vamping Firefox's userChrome.css because its UI is THAT bad.
| And now there's Proton. I'm sure there's someone out there that
| likes it, but I haven't heard from anyone who does. Want to turn
| it off? Too bad. Mozilla thinks they know what's best for their
| users and seems incapable of internalizing any criticism. If
| Firefox is so great, why would so many calories get burned
| creating Waterfox? If Mozilla were really doing a great job with
| Firefox, giving people what they really wanted in a browser, they
| wouldn't need to be quite so concerned about Microsoft's
| shenanigans. If it were a great and wonderful browser, people
| would want it and do what they needed to do to install it. This
| is not an argument that what MS is doing is okay; it's not. But
| after everything Firefox has dished out over the last few years,
| it's just difficult for me to feel too sorry for them.
| vmoore wrote:
| > Meanwhile, Firefox released version 57 that killed most of
| their extensions and add-ons
|
| Palemoon supports older addons. Even has a archive of all the
| old FF extensions on its homepage[0]. I never needed that many
| addons though. I can't live without uBlock Origin though. It
| should _ship_ with FF IMHO
|
| [0] https://addons.palemoon.org/extensions/?all=1
| mftb wrote:
| So when FF reduces customization by changing the extension
| system they are bad. When they let you customize the UI ad-
| infinitum through userChrome.css it's because, "its UI is THAT
| bad.". Right, got it, FF bad. Some of the devs who have worked
| on the FF extension system over the years both before and after
| the changes have blogged about why they had to do what they
| did, https://yoric.github.io/post/why-did-mozilla-remove-xul-
| addo..., are security and maintainability difficult to grok? FF
| is large and has had to live in an increasingly hostile web for
| a very long time. As for your reasoning about why there are
| alternative browsers and ecosystems, it's simply not good. One
| of the main reasons people work on alternative browsers is they
| like making things. This is evident everywhere in Free
| Software/Open Source, where there are options for almost every
| part of every stack.
| chriscjcj wrote:
| Your point that extensions to modify the UI vs.
| userChrome.css is well taken, but I would argue that it's
| apples and oranges. I did a poor job of explaining myself.
| I'll attempt to elucidate and apologize if I do a poor job
| again. My argument regarding breaking extensions was in the
| context of allowing users to modify the browser's UI/UX to
| their liking.
|
| Installing an extension is a common practice performed by
| many people who possess little-to-no "computer skills." (for
| lack of a better way to put it.) Just about anyone can search
| for an extension, perform a few clicks, and install it. And
| this used to be a popular method for those who disliked UI
| changes Mozilla foisted upon them so that they could easily
| return to a UI they enjoyed. Unfortunately, the UI
| modifications that can now be made with extensions are
| minimal. Users are encouraged to modify userChrome.css
| instead. While this may seem trivial and perhaps preferred by
| some in the HN demographic, this effectively takes it out of
| the mainstream. Most users are not going to find their FF
| profile folder, create a chrome folder (which doesn't exist
| by default), and start coding css to make their browser look
| different. Nor are they going to have any idea that there are
| projects on github which would provide solutions for them.
| But let's say, for argument's sake that one did go to the
| trouble. Would you like to move the tabs below the address
| bar? Good luck with that. And then watch your css no longer
| work when Mozilla makes further changes making your
| modifications ineffective. There is one project that does
| manage to move the tabs below the address bar but it leaves a
| blank area above the address bar where the tabs would be.
| Mozilla has dug in on their tab bar dogma, user preference be
| damned. We're seeing it again with proton. It seems to be
| universally reviled, but guess what: you're gettin' it
| whether you like it or not. Want to use your operating
| system's printer dialog box instead of FireFox's incomplete
| and buggy one? Too bad. https://support.mozilla.org/en-
| US/questions/1322589?page=2#a...
|
| I also understand that people create derivatives of open
| source projects as an intellectual pursuit, which is
| wonderful. However, I used Waterfox as an example. Indeed,
| Waterfox appears to have begun its existence in much the way
| you describe. But fast-forward to now, on their website's
| main page, they trumpet their tab bar thus: "Fan-tab-u-lous -
| Everyone likes to use their browser in a specific way." And
| indeed, in the preferences there is a simple way to set the
| position of the tab bar. Why would that be so hard for
| Mozilla to do in Firefox? Why? They also highlight, "Limited
| Data Collection," "No Telemetry," and "The most extension
| support of any browser." Do you not think it safe to infer
| that this may be their current raison d'etre and how they
| would like to differentiate themselves from Firefox?
|
| Yes, I know there are alternative projects. My criticism is
| directed primarily toward the Firefox UI team. It is a
| mystery to me why an organization that expends so much energy
| and money marketing itself in an attempt to get new users,
| regularly angering its existing users to the point where they
| want to bail. This article is nice explainer:
| https://www.inc.com/karl-and-bill/its-cheaper-to-keep-
| em.htm...
| chriscjcj wrote:
| FWIW... here's a thread on the topic from /. today.
|
| https://news.slashdot.org/story/21/09/12/181257/ask-
| slashdot...
| tgtweak wrote:
| The amount of dark design patterns around getting edge as the
| default browser is sickening. Opera was flagged as PUA by many
| AVs for simply changing the default browser after asking users
| post-install if they wanted to use that browser as their default
| - just as edge does (and before Firefox copied that same
| mechanism here). Now every post-windows update screen (which
| takes place before you even log in...) comes with a full-page nag
| screen asking you to "Use Microsoft recommended browser settings"
| [1]... This is on the heels of a screen that says "Let's make
| Windows even better - this shouldn't affect what you've already
| set up" [2]. Even more disappointing is not that they're doing
| this but that nobody is taking these platforms to court over it
| in a meaningful way.
|
| [1] https://www.windowslatest.com/2020/11/15/windows-10-is-
| now-n...
|
| [2] https://www.windowslatest.com/2020/06/07/windows-10-full-
| scr...
| trzeci wrote:
| +1 on that: It's still manageable to set a default browser
| which is not Ms Edge, but I found especially dark pattern -
| that Windows apps do not respect that setting. Take a look on
| the news feed in the recent Windows 10 release. When you click
| on a link, it opens Ms Edge regardless what you have set as
| default browser. I think I've seen also some user guides /
| support pages opening also in Ms Edge that way. Frankly
| speaking, even if I found some news feeds interesting, the fact
| it will be opened in MS Edge made me to disable the feed at
| all.
| inetknght wrote:
| > _Even more disappointing is not that they 're doing this but
| that nobody is taking these platforms to court over it in a
| meaningful way._
|
| Average citizens don't have the money needed to fight big
| corporate lawyers.
|
| FTC, FCC, SEC, etc are all neutered in will and in budget.
|
| Will nobody rid us of a corrupt collusion between government
| and corporation?
| p_j_w wrote:
| >Will nobody rid us of a corrupt collusion between government
| and corporation?
|
| We could by changing who we vote for.
| lnxg33k1 wrote:
| Yeah, considering the amount of money needed to be known
| and collect votes i guess it's either the government
| starting to fund campaigns and disallowing corporate
| donation or i see it as very hard to change that
| oehpr wrote:
| I'm sure if party A doesn't fix it, party B will totally
| fix it! Definitely.
|
| Oh, but maybe you're right, if we all just collectively
| decided for party C, then things would really work.
|
| Huh, I guess party C can't get in because of FPTP, well we
| can change that! No big deal! Let's use a new voting
| system!
|
| ~ Signed: A person who lives in a province that has had 3
| failed voting referendums.
| myohmy wrote:
| If you're in BC (probably) then you need to look a little
| further back. The reason we have the BC Liberals (aka
| Conservatives) is because the NDP (socdems) won on FPTP
| and the Libs and Cons merged. Voting 3rd party is why we
| are the only province in Canada with a vaccine passport.
|
| I fully expect the Greens to win eventually. BCers will
| vote their conscience, everybody else be damned.
| inetknght wrote:
| Changing votes won't solve the problem in America's two-
| party system. It needs serious election reform not just in
| donations but also in how the election works.
| 93po wrote:
| I think the first step is to changing voting system so
| that it isn't possible to have spoiler candidates or
| "throw away" your vote. Of course it'll probably be 20-30
| years before that happens.
| myohmy wrote:
| So the solution to the two party system is to eliminate
| democracy altogether?
|
| I mean, I guess I expect that in 20-30 too...
| lacksconfidence wrote:
| IMO the solution is at least releated to ranked choice
| voting, where people can vote for people that will never
| win (at least this time around) without their vote
| becoming meaningless.
| shkkmo wrote:
| Alaska (my home state) implemented ranked choice voting
| and open primaries via a ballot initiative. This applies
| to both state and federal elections.
| seph-reed wrote:
| If anyone is going to save public sector from private, it's
| gonna have to be good-actors in private sector.
|
| Public sector is long, long, long beyond corrupted. The only
| way forwards is to carefully migrate away from the infested
| wreckage into something built from the ground up.
|
| It's like a code-base that's been hacked mercilessly, and was
| written in a dead language to boot.
| narag wrote:
| Let me add: last Windows update nuked VLC sound.
|
| I wanted to report details of the bug, but after creating an
| account with VLC, I can't post anything unless I provide my
| phone number.
| faebi wrote:
| I recently had to help my parents since they could not login to
| their email service anymore because Microsoft silently switched
| the default browser to edge. And of course their saved
| credentials aren't available anymore. They asked me what they did
| wrong. I had no other words to say than that Microsoft is
| literally abusing their position to force them to use something
| else. It's Microsofts fault and we can't do anything about it.
| Then I had to video call them to guide them through the anti-
| patterns when switching the default browser. So, I do like
| Mozillas behavior and wish Chrome offered the same.
| lawl wrote:
| Here's the relevant commit: https://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-
| central/rev/e928b3e95a6c3b725...
|
| (I think)
| [deleted]
| arsome wrote:
| The fun bit (the generation of the "UserChoice" hash) is here:
|
| https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/source/browser/compone...
| Someone1234 wrote:
| Looks like it is going to:
|
| Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVe
| rsion\Explorer\FileExts
|
| For ".html", ".htm" and:
|
| Computer\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Shell\Ass
| ociations\UrlAssociations
|
| For "https", "http" then:
|
| - Nuke the UserChoice key because Microsoft put special
| permissions on it.
|
| - Re-create the UserChoice key setting the ProgId to Firefox
| and then calculating the hash.
|
| - The hash is calculated using, in part, a hard-coded Windows
| internal GUID see FormatUserChoiceString here:
|
| https://hg.mozilla.org/releases/mozilla-release/diff/7e775ce...
|
| The whole thing looks super easy for Microsoft to break in a
| future Windows release unfortunately.
| Egoist wrote:
| Interestingly, the first two registry steps are actually the
| same as the previous windows. Having it behind a hash seems
| way too user hostile though.
| deoxykev wrote:
| Looks like the hard-coded Windows internal GUID is found in
| C:\Windows\SysWOW64\Shell32.dll
|
| If you search for the string: "User Choice set via Windows
| User Experience", you'll find the GUID used to calculate the
| hash.
| bob1029 wrote:
| > The whole thing looks super easy for Microsoft to break in
| a future Windows release unfortunately.
|
| There are more aggressive techniques available that cannot be
| turned off very easily. TrustedInstaller is the first one
| that comes to mind. If you cant politely ask the registry,
| you can always nuke edge from orbit.
|
| I hope Firefox keeps pushing down this route. Make your
| installation process as inflammatory as possible. I would
| encourage a "Remove all existing web browsers" checkbox in
| the final pane of the installation process - Default
| selected, of course. Give them a proper taste of their own
| medicine.
| jefftk wrote:
| _> "Remove all existing web browsers" checkbox_
|
| Users having multiple browsers installed that they switch
| between is a good thing that puts more pressure on browsers
| to improve, and I would hate to see Firefox or any other
| vendor push the dynamic farther away from that.
| layer8 wrote:
| Sounds like what SetUserFTA does:
| https://kolbi.cz/blog/2017/10/25/setuserfta-userchoice-
| hash-...
| vxNsr wrote:
| This is what I was looking for.
| jftuga wrote:
| An interesting excerpt: // When Windows
| creates this key, it is read-only (Deny Set Value), so we need
| // to delete it first. // We don't set any similar
| special permissions.
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| Microsoft is using "protected associations" to keep people using
| Edge, but I think people are forgetting how badly this used to be
| abused before Microsoft added this feature.
|
| Applications would regularly change default associations without
| any user notice or consent.
|
| For example, installers would bundle Adware and even Google
| Chrome (hidden with common dark patters of the time), setting
| your default browser or changing your homepage.
| Semaphor wrote:
| I think it's less that they block this (as much as us
| powerusers might prefer them not to), and more that they
| decided they obviously deserve to be exempt.
| Someone1234 wrote:
| You're right.
|
| The issue is mostly one of fairness: If Microsoft played by the
| same rules as Firefox/Chrome, then there is no issue (e.g. UI
| pops up, you have to select Edge). The problem is that
| Microsoft has one rule for them and another for everyone else,
| then designed an incredibly hostile defaults UI on Windows 11
| to make changing it to non-Edge time-consuming.
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| Yup, the fact the settings dialogue behaves differently if
| your current browser is Edge is clearly unfair, and Edge has
| already been doing what Firefox is doing how, and skips the
| UI entirely by spoofing the signature in the registry that
| served to protect against non-consensual changes.
| josephcsible wrote:
| The concept of protected associations is reasonable. What's
| completely unreasonable is giving Edge an exception to the
| protection.
| tgsovlerkhgsel wrote:
| The concept of protected associations is only reasonable if
| you ignore the fact that there will be a default. It is, de
| facto for many users, making it impossible to change that
| default.
| josephcsible wrote:
| If it were just unreasonably hard to change default
| browsers, I wouldn't even care that much. The problem is
| that it's unreasonably hard to change away from Edge, but
| really really easy to change back to Edge.
| dralley wrote:
| Sure, fine, put in a generic "are you sure you want to do this"
| prompt.
|
| But that's not what they have right now. What they have now is
| designed to promote and nag you about using Edge, specifically.
|
| https://www.itsupportguides.com/wp-content/uploads/Windows10...
| sdflhasjd wrote:
| > Sure, fine, put in a generic "are you sure you want to do
| this" prompt.
|
| That's how it used to work (and how it works with non-browser
| associations) before the more recent Edge-pushing dark
| patterns.
| aitchnyu wrote:
| Outlook and Teams on Android force me to install Edge to view
| links. I can't even paste links to non MS apps since the
| plaintext will be a notice instead.
| hamilyon2 wrote:
| Wait, what? Isn't it a definite violation of android rules
| around usage of intents and actions?
| itsme-alan wrote:
| I am using Teams for Android and Outlook and I don't have
| even have Edge installed and links work fine.
| rejectfinite wrote:
| That is probably a configuration/compliance policy set by your
| IT department via Microsoft Endpoint Manager. That is not
| standard I think?
| bluedino wrote:
| I came in this morning to find my computer was opening PDF's in
| Edge, as well as the default browser had been changed from Chrome
| to Edge.
|
| Stupid.
| awinter-py wrote:
| I don't understand -- US v microsoft was about literally this,
| except it was netscape. How do you go through the largest tech
| antitrust action ever and then just forget.
|
| Why does msft even _want_ their thing to be default? The only
| site I 've ever seen recommend it is the NY DMV, and it was a bad
| recommendation -- they actually needed IE11.
| ndiddy wrote:
| In Windows XP the "set default programs" control panel had a one-
| click "non-microsoft" setting that would change all default
| programs to your installed alternatives. It seems like the
| effects of their 90s antitrust trial seem to be wearing off.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Many here would argue they have less of a monopoly than ever.
| Even as someone who thinks Windows does and will continue to
| dominate the desktop for at least another decade, I find that
| hard to disagree with given the mass migration of users from
| desktop to mobile.
| aeharding wrote:
| If Microsoft's concern is default app hijacking by malicious
| players, why isn't there some sort of app-signing process to
| provide programs the better API?
| kevincox wrote:
| It should just be a one-click UAC window probably "Are you sure
| you want Firefox to do this". But these dark patterns are
| common.
| josephcsible wrote:
| I'd be fine with this if a UAC approval were also needed to
| make Edge the default browser.
| cge wrote:
| This is particularly frustrating, yes. I think I'd actually
| prefer it if applications could not make arbitrary changes
| to system/user defaults on their own. I've had problems
| with this on Windows, when I've needed to use it, but also
| on Android, and even desktop Linux (Chromium in Debian sid
| currently, rather bafflingly, seems to make itself the xdg-
| open default even with $BROWSER, Gnome's default browser
| setting, and x-www-browser all set to Firefox).
|
| But to ostensibly create central, user-controlled methods
| and restrictions for setting defaults to prevent unwanted
| default changes and hijacking, and then actually use that
| space as an advertisement for your own products (Are you
| sure you want to change away from Edge? Have you tried
| Edge? Do you want to switch back to Edge? Microsoft
| recommends Edge!), while exempting your products from the
| restrictions, completely destroys the point of those
| controls, and any respect people would have for it.
| CA0DA wrote:
| The default browser switch in Windows 10 was using multiple dark
| patterns to get you to stay with Edge. Good for Firefox.
| kunagi7 wrote:
| I expect that Microsoft won't like this and they will patch it.
|
| Even if Firefox does this with good intentions, malware creators
| can follow Firefox's example to do the same. Since Firefox is
| open source they only need to copy the code from the repo.
| tinus_hn wrote:
| The way to do this has been known for years.
|
| https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/vstudio/en-US/bb630...
| NazakiAid wrote:
| This explains why the other day on a fresh Windows install,
| Firefox set its self to the default browser with just 1 click.
| Very easy and great especially as the computer was very slow.
|
| Though I will admit, I thought something had gone wrong and it
| didn't work as it couldn't open the default apps dialog.
| kipchak wrote:
| Fun Fact, if you go to Settings -> More Tools -> Math Solver,
| Edge has a built in math tool that will solve for equations in
| the browser window when highlighted.
|
| https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/articles/learn-how-to...
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| msft lunch break comment?
| kipchak wrote:
| I wish, just digging in Edge attempting to configure it for
| compliance purposes and I thought a Math Solver being a
| feature was mildly amusing
| dehrmann wrote:
| This might not be an issue for default apps, but there was a time
| when websites and toolbars abused setting the default homepage,
| so I have mixed feelings about this. It also improves the user
| experience if you use two browsers because when Chrome reminds me
| it's not the default, it's harder to accidentally make it the
| default.
| gadders wrote:
| Offtopic, but does anyone find Firefox really slow for gmail? I'm
| wondering if Google do stuff to slow Firefox down deliberately.
| dralley wrote:
| Gmail performance is pretty horrific, for what it does. It used
| to be even worse (twice as much memory and CPU as _Youtube_
| according to about:performance), but they 've improved a bit
| since then.
|
| It's still pretty bad, though.
| trident5000 wrote:
| You're getting downvoted but they actually did this with
| Youtube. So the answer is yes its possible.
| maskros wrote:
| Not really, but I'm still using Basic HTML gmail!
|
| It's a very well hidden option, but the
| https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/h/ link should take you there.
| fleaaaa wrote:
| It was once unusually fast on FF right after google shortage a
| couple of month ago. Everything I click was instant, never had
| those kind of experience.
|
| Now I feel like it's slow on both. There might be a priority
| issue but I doubt its slowness is FF only.
| aSig wrote:
| Any idea on how you would go about reverse engineering something
| like this on windows?
| heywherelogingo wrote:
| "Wow, Microsoft has really changed!"
| swamp40 wrote:
| In the end of days, amongst the smoldering ruins, a cockroach
| scurried over a keyboard and triggered yet another computer to
| default back to Microsoft Edge. As far as the eye could see,
| there was nothing left moving but the flitting of black vermin,
| illuminated by glowing screens filled with the sulky,
| impassioned, and now joyful gradient blue and green curved wave
| of the Microsoft Edge logo. It had won. It had finally won.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| As I was reading this article I kept thinking to myself
| "Microsoft is going to boot Firefox from Windows" before
| realizing that MS doesn't have that sort of power (compared to
| say Apple).
|
| It's really interesting how MS will approach this. Unlike Apple,
| MS doesn't have direct control over which apps go on the
| operating system, they aren't even in a position like Google
| where their app store is the dominant platform for getting apps.
|
| This will be interesting, interesting to see how MS responds.
| Will they give in and let users easily set their default browser
| or will this turn into a cat and mouse game.
|
| Lastly I think what MS is doing with the default browser is
| foolish. Did they learn nothing from the antitrust cases of the
| 2000's
| ilaksh wrote:
| They do have some control though. If you don't list with their
| app store they default to accusing your software of being
| malware and hiding the run button.
| whywhywhywhy wrote:
| > and hiding the run button
|
| This isn't completely accurate, if the app is being seen only
| in very small numbers the run button is hidden under "More
| Info" but when Smartscreen has seen your app enough that it
| can be more confident it's less harmful the "Run Anyway"
| button is surfaced.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| That's not related to app store though, just the CA
| protection racket.
| ilaksh wrote:
| It is because they waive the CA if you go through the
| store.
| pc86 wrote:
| My guess is they'll just leave it. You'll have the one-click
| for Edge, whatever this workaround/RE is for Firefox, and
| everything else will be the same. Maybe Mozilla will open
| source this workaround.
| iggldiggl wrote:
| They'd have to go out of their way to _not_ open-source it.
| vishnumohandas wrote:
| > Apple
|
| FWIW, on iOS, links from Google apps open up on Chrome if it's
| installed, regardless of what your default browser is. Apple
| seems to be okay with that.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| Any app can do app specific URLs on iOS to invoke particular
| apps with content. I would guess that Google apps detect the
| presence of Chrome and modify the URLs to be Chrome specific
| rather than generic https URLs. Its ok with Apple because
| that is a standard supported mechanism on iOS.
| vishnumohandas wrote:
| As a user who expects all https links to open within my
| default browser, Google's exploitation of this workaround
| breaks the guarantees I expect out of the OS.
|
| There are a lot of other "features" that are technically
| feasible but not allowed on AppStore. This to me should
| have been on that list.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| Good point. Yeah, I don't like it either. Thinking about
| it a bit more, I share your surprise that they allowed
| this. I guess they need it for google.com links to make
| things work together, but Apple could have told them non-
| google links should be opened in the default browser.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| Any browser on iOS is just UI over Safari's rendering engine
| and JS runtime.
|
| Chrome, as in Blink and V8, is banned by Apple from running
| on iOS.
| dev_tty01 wrote:
| Of course Apple allows Mac users to set the default browser as
| a choice on the very first General preferences panel. Trivial
| to change.
| sitzkrieg wrote:
| yea the flawless mac experience, what next being able to
| uninstall apple music or podcasts?
| barryvan wrote:
| I suspect they will buckle -- but only partially, with an
| allowlist of browsers blessed with this ability. This will
| quiet the noise, but will also make it harder for small and
| innovative browsers to compete, as I doubt Microsoft will build
| out the processes to become blessed due to cost/benefit.
| heavyset_go wrote:
| This seems to be an industry-wide trend. Google, somewhat
| recently, also banned "unauthorized" browsers from logging
| into Google accounts at all.
| bluGill wrote:
| Probably, but for security reasons the only correct thing to
| do is remove the ability of Edge to set default browser
| within the browser.
|
| The only option app developers - including internal Microsoft
| ones - should have is open some OS settings app in a
| supported way, but the user has to accept the selection.
| blendergeek wrote:
| It should work like an Android permission prompt. The OS
| should have an official method for apps to request to
| become the default (not merely link to the default apps
| page of settings). The OS prompt should look like this:
|
| Would you like to make <APP NAME> the default app for <APP
| CATEGORY>?
|
| [No and don't ask again] [Yes]
|
| Any app that wants to become the default (including Edge)
| _should_ go through the official prompt. If the user has
| already said no, and the app wants to continue nagging, at
| this point the app will be able to link into the settings
| (but not pop up the official prompt).
| cabalamat wrote:
| > This will be interesting, interesting to see how MS responds
|
| Maybe they'll make a better browser, so people will prefer
| theirs to Firefox and Chrome? Nah, that's unlikely.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| That can just cripple Office.com to browsers other than Edge,
| then it looks like they have a better browser -- much easier!
| worrycue wrote:
| To be fair, Edge is basically just Chrome now no? It isn't
| too bad although I stuck to Firefox.
| cabalamat wrote:
| > Edge is basically just Chrome now no?
|
| Exactly. MS have given up on the idea of making a better
| browser.
| zaat wrote:
| So I was at my parents house some time ago and my mom's
| computer is for some reason set allow installing software from
| the Microsoft store only. Nobody knows how that was set, my
| mom's computer usage is characterized by randomly clicking on
| things until the website she wants open, but somehow that
| option have appeared for her to click on.
| criley2 wrote:
| Windows 10S only allows Microsoft Store downloads and you
| have to change to Home/Pro to allow .exe's to run at all.
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| > Did they learn nothing from the antitrust cases of the 2000's
|
| They learned for awhile- until the rest of the industry caught
| up.
|
| This might sound weird but I've actually been rooting for
| Microsoft a lot lately. A majority of their revenue is not from
| ads and lock-in BS and they weren't called in front of Congress
| recently over antitrust concerns. I was hoping they would set
| themselves apart from the pack in an odd way by making good
| software and hardware products that people enjoy using. (xbox,
| windows, office, WSL, VSCode, Visual Studio, hololens, phones,
| laptops, Halo on Steam, etc.)
|
| Seeing the new browser war and direction Windows 11 is headed,
| now has me worried. The widgets pane is obviously for serving
| ads.
|
| I understand that these public companies are required to act in
| the best interests of shareholders but I fear that the
| obsessive push for revenue gains only benefits short term
| shareholders. Long term shareholders get the shaft when every
| decision is aimed at squeezing revenue just for the next
| quarter.
|
| Edit: I'm not a Microsoft/Windows-Stan either, I've been using
| Linux intermittently since 2006-ish and now daily drive Fedora
| as my main.
| syshum wrote:
| >>and lock-in BS
|
| Microsoft has all kinds of ways they do vertical lockin, it
| is not has overt as say Apple, but do not think for a second
| that the company that promoted Embrace, Extend, Extinguish
| does not have methods to lock in users
| ChrisSD wrote:
| > I understand that these public companies are required to
| act in the best interests of shareholders
|
| This is not true. Public companies are only required to be
| honest with shareholders, no more or less. The shareholders
| are free to invest elsewhere if the don't like how a company
| is run, or to exercise whatever voting rights they bought
| with the shares.
| dylan604 wrote:
| That might have been true in the past, but now there are
| activist shareholders who will try to take control rather
| than dump the stock and move on to something else. After
| all, it is their investment, and if they choose to raise
| their voice then that is their right as well.
| ChrisSD wrote:
| Sure they can raise their voice but they're limited in
| what they can achieve, legally speaking. Especially in
| large companies with a lot of shareholders. Unless the
| companies by-laws give shareholders undue influence,
| which would be unusual.
|
| It's true that activists can make a nuisance of
| themselves if there are enough of them but they basically
| have to hope to get sections of the press on their side
| and for the company to care about that. The risk, of
| course, is the bad press ends up hurting their own
| investment.
|
| In short, they have no legal recourse unless the company
| mislead them in some way.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Are you really this unfamiliar with this or being obtuse
| about it? Of course it is unlikely that a single
| shareholder will have enough stock to hold clout, but
| that's not how these people operate. Just like no one
| person makes a difference when protesting anything. You
| find like minded people, gather together, and make your
| large number of people heard. Sure, it's not easy to get
| a large enough percentage of the stock, but there are
| ways of doing it and it has been done and will continue
| to be done. A recent tech example is how Disney was
| pushed by its investors to pursue the streaming options
| [0].
|
| [0]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-10-07/dis
| ney-ac...
| ChrisSD wrote:
| Huh? Even the headline uses the word "urges" and the
| article doesn't say that Loeb can "require" anything. All
| that happened is that:
|
| > Loeb sent a letter to Disney Chief Executive Officer
| Bob Chapek
|
| And made it an open letter to get press attention. Loeb
| is doing as I said in my last comment. He tried to get
| sections of the press on side.
| dylan604 wrote:
| Okay, so you're being obtuse. Got it.
|
| Have you tried playing this out to the end? You're hung
| up on words like "require" that I, some random dude on
| the interweb used, rather than actually realizing the
| intent or spirit of the comment. You think any company
| receiving negative press is going to just allow that to
| continue without addressing the concerns somehow? An
| activist investor/shareholder doesn't just stop with
| press briefings. If they still feel agrieved, they can
| attempt to manipulate the board by having their own
| member installed. From there, they can direct if the CEO
| even gets to keep their job. As a board member, they have
| a lot more power.
|
| I feel like you're limiting your imagination on how much
| power stockholders can have. Some companies are probably
| a little more resielient against this type of "attack",
| but rich people play all sorts of games because they feel
| slighted or bored. Watch the TV show "Billions" if you
| want some fun fictional aspects, but these stories are
| not made in a vacuum.
| ChrisSD wrote:
| Btw, naming calling does not help you make your case,
| whatever that may be. Neither does watching a fictional
| TV show. I'm really not inclined to continue this if this
| is the level of discourse.
|
| Can you show me one instance of activist shareholders of
| a major company ousting a CEO via filling the board with
| shareholder nominated directors? And no, "imagining" it
| happening isn't evidence of it happening.
| dylan604 wrote:
| If you think the term obtuse is name calling then that's
| kind of on you. That's not my intent. It's just a word
| that aptly describes the conversation. Obtuse and
| ignorant are often misunderstood and taken as name
| calling when if someone was name calling words like
| stupid and dumb would be better suited.
|
| >Can you show me one instance
|
| Just a quick search: Exxon directors replaced:
| https://www.cnn.com/2021/05/26/business/exxon-annual-
| meeting...
|
| Intel CEO ousted:
| https://warriortradingnews.com/2021/01/14/intel-ceo-
| ousted-b...
|
| Shareholder activism can work. Yes, there are plenty of
| search results titles that show the activism attempts to
| oust someone failed. However, I did not pursue further
| (beyond the scope of your question and lack of willing to
| search on your own) if the attempt still had a change
| towards the activist's agenda.
|
| It seems that shareholder activists seem to be disliked
| in the normal business world, but the normal business
| world has taken us down some dark paths so I think they
| can take a hike. Businesses have shown they care little
| to nothing about the "greater good", but are only
| concerned about the stockholders. So people have gotten
| savvy to that notion, and have started to weaponize stock
| ownership. Just like anything else, it can used for
| "evil" and it was for a long time with hostile takeovers.
| Now, these takeovers can have an impetus for good instead
| of greed.
| cabalamat wrote:
| > The widgets pane is obviously for serving ads.
|
| If Windows is going to have ads at the OS level, that I can't
| get rid of, I simply won't use it.
|
| > Long term shareholders get the shaft when every decision is
| aimed at squeezing revenue just for the next quarter.
|
| True
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| What is the definition of long term? Investments in
| Microsoft and Apple would surely have paid off over the
| past few decades.
| ravenstine wrote:
| > I understand that these public companies are required to
| act in the best interests of shareholders but I fear that the
| obsessive push for revenue gains only benefits short term
| shareholders. Long term shareholders get the shaft when every
| decision is aimed at squeezing revenue just for the next
| quarter.
|
| Never so succinctly have I seen described the economic
| problem of the modern age; endless growth for its own sake.
| Sure, it's motivated by profit, but society and global elites
| don't act as if there are significant downsides to an
| investment-driven economy. Rather, it's treated as a virtue,
| else we wouldn't all be buying into it, literally and
| figuratively, for the bare minimum of _not_ losing our
| wealth.
|
| > Halo on Steam
|
| Hah, you don't hear much about Halo anymore. But it's
| entirely possible you may be able to play Halo on Steam on
| your Linux machine in the near future. Combat Evolved plays
| really well on my M1 Macbook through Parallels (even with
| Anniversary mode, given some settings tweaks) and Reach is
| playable but drops a lot of frames; if you ever get a Linux
| machine that runs on ARM then you can virtualize Windows for
| ARM in a way that blows away any x86_64 emulation I've seen
| in the past.
|
| Of course most of the work to make that a reality isn't even
| because of Microsoft besides their compiling of Windows for
| ARM.
|
| Besides that...
|
| > xbox, windows, office, WSL, VSCode, Visual Studio,
| hololens, phones, laptops, Halo on Steam, etc.
|
| Honestly, the only decent things you mentioned are Office,
| VSCode, and Halo, which are all things that just about any
| other company could have created. Office itself is begging
| for a viable alternative, but has been effectively
| grandfathered in to being a necessity for businesses. I
| mentioned Halo but not Xbox because, IMO, Xbox is an obsolete
| concept and Microsoft knows this.
|
| There's GitHub, but it's only a matter of time before
| Microsoft decides to add "plans" for features that are
| already free as well as forms of prioritization for all
| things Windows.
|
| I guess I'm not exactly sure what point I'm trying to make
| besides that I _kind of agree with you_ in the sense that M$
| has been less problematic than other Big Tech in recent
| years. With Windows 11, now I 'm not so sure.
| paganel wrote:
| Imo their Lumia phones (and the accompanying OS and new UI
| philosophy) were also something special, and I say that as
| a hater of those products earlier on (i.e. before I got to
| know them better). It's a shame that those phones didn't
| catch on.
| ISV_Damocles wrote:
| Just a side note: I already can play Halo on Steam on Linux
| with only one minor issue (Proton's conversion of DirectX
| to Vulkan works _almost_ flawlessly, but doesn 't seem to
| handle single-faced triangles, so the hologram of Cortana
| in the opening scene looks bad as you see the back of her
| head transparently through her face).
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Microsoft's ad problem is that they damage their existing
| products to advertise new products that are a lost cause.
|
| There was that "crash your desktop" bug caused by an ad for
| Teams but longer ago there was OneDrive... DropBox, Box,
| Google and many others could make file sharing programs that
| could sync successfully, but somehow Microsoft couldn't.
|
| To add injury to insult they made OneDrive the default way to
| save files in Microsoft Office, but sometimes a problem with
| OneDrive would mean YOU COULDN'T SAVE YOUR WORK AT ALL.
|
| If you've had that experience ONCE you are NEVER going to use
| OneDrive ever.
|
| Then there was that time that OneNote was a pretty good
| product but Microsoft killed it by inserting at least five
| icons on and around your desktop (practically up your nose)
| signalling that it is absolute garbage that they're trying to
| force up your A*.
|
| Google kills products after the launch, but Microsoft kills
| them in the process of launch with it's internal advertising.
| easton wrote:
| OneDrive on Windows is fine now, but oh my gosh OneDrive
| for Mac is a mess. I didn't use it until my new M1 Mac (so
| maybe they are re-implementing everything without kernel
| extensions and it's causing issues), but it absolutely
| sucks. Every time it starts it can't find the folder, and I
| have to tell it where it is, then it will say "up-to-date"
| but nothing will actually have synced, then when it
| eventually catches up it spews duplicate files everywhere
| because every other box I have OneDrive on has updated
| since this computer actually synced. And Office doesn't
| understand that when I save in the ~/OneDrive folder, it
| goes into OneDrive, so it won't enable AutoSave or sharing
| unless you do a Save As and save it to the OneDrive
| SharePoint site it automatically adds.
|
| It's like OneDrive on Windows 5-6 years ago. I know other
| people that used it, it worked fine at one point, but now
| it's terrible.
| dralley wrote:
| Google isn't immune to this https://imgur.com/a/vtW67nt
| gruez wrote:
| Looks like you have google fonts disabled? They're
| supposed to be icons, but since they can't be loaded, the
| text gets shown instead.
| missblit wrote:
| Icon fonts like `Material Icons` are a terrible idea for
| exactly this reason.
|
| They can also confuse search engines (Try a Google search
| for "keyboard_arrow_up" and scroll down a few results for
| instance, Bing too if you put it in quotes).
|
| Webmasters should use SVGs or bitmaps with appropriate
| alt or aria attributes; but it's easier to just load in a
| font and hope that it loads fast enough to not cause
| problems / that the user doesn't override it
| tl wrote:
| > To add injury to insult they made OneDrive the default
| way to save files in Microsoft Office, but sometimes a
| problem with OneDrive would mean YOU COULDN'T SAVE YOUR
| WORK AT ALL.
|
| It's worse than that. The change to default OneDrive breaks
| auto-save everywhere that isn't OneDrive. On the Mac, this
| includes breaking auto-save on pre-Azure Sharepoint
| instances and network shares, but some of that works
| sometimes on Windows. So Office is a worse product even if
| you _never_ use OneDrive.
| Notanothertoo wrote:
| Yep and as a Mac user with office your just left
| wondering why. Why on earth would I use one drive on Mac.
| One of the many reasons stopped using office on Mac. Rip
| excel.
| Craighead wrote:
| Ahahahahahahahahaha
|
| >a majority of their revenue is not from ads and lock-in BS
|
| You're not a stan, you're only a fool.
| prox wrote:
| I wish I could give you an award or magically transport you
| to the MS office where these ridiculous choices are made. You
| hit nail on head I think.
|
| It's the same manager mistakes over and over again.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I was also kinda liked _The New Microsoft_ and prepared to
| put my anger towards them to the side (I remember the ACPI
| memo days). Also, as a grown-up computer user, I got
| appropriate number of licenses (for every Microsoft
| application we use) for my family and personal computers.
|
| However, the latest GitHub Copilot stuff, their agreement
| with OpenAI, return of their embrace, extend, extinguish
| tactics with GitHub, VSCode and other stuff undone
| everything.
|
| It's their DNA now. All Microsoft Empire is built with
| crushing monopoly as their core value and driving force.
| Changing this requires more than changing a mere CEO and
| posting a "We Love Linux" banner.
|
| The only really good thing they do is hardware.
|
| Posted from my Debian 11 box using Microsoft Keyboard.
| Semaphor wrote:
| What kind of EEE do they currently do? Outside of GH, I
| don't even see them having any kind of position dominant
| enough to extinguish anything and GH doesn't seem to have
| shifted in any way since MS bought them, they were "value
| add on top of git" before and are still now.
| ginko wrote:
| WSL is clearly EEE.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| I don't exactly see how WSL fits in any "extinguish"
| strategy. Maybe in regards to desktop Linux? I doubt
| Microsoft are aiming to extinguish desktop Linux
| considering its currently irrelevant market share and
| Windows no longer being Microsoft's bread winner. WSL
| seems to be more for the benefit of Azure, their real
| money maker, and backend developers.
|
| I'd wager it started development as an internal tool
| considering how much of their workforce now works on
| Azure and the Windows team being absorbed into the Azure
| department.
| ginko wrote:
| Of course in regards to desktop Linux, what else? It
| keeps developers inside the Windows ecosystem.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I'd argue the opposite... Although I'm changing jobs in a
| few weeks, WSL2 has allowed for a push towards
| Linux/Docker usage and a significant uptake for new
| development. This is in a historically mostly Windows
| environment... if it weren't for WSL, it would still all
| be windows.
|
| The shift in open development of .Net Core/5/6 has been
| nice too. I absolutely love the Remoting
| extensions/tooling for VS Code as well. I can
| edit/terminal on remote systems with ease. All of these
| things have made actually building/deploying to Linux
| servers a pleasure.
|
| I jokingly say that Windows is one of the best Linux
| Desktop distros at this point, and there's some merit to
| that claim. I have the new terminal set to my WSL
| environment as default, spend most of my time in VS Code
| using WSL and Docker. Of course, I'm also switching my
| personal desktop back to (only) PopOS in a few weeks,
| also bought an M1 Macbook.
|
| I'm not tethered to Windows in any meaningful way, but
| the water is pretty nice. It's crap like in TFA that
| causes me to not want to stay in the Windows pool.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| I imagine WSL doesn't really affect most Linux desktop
| users and it really only impacts those that used full-
| blown VMs for dev work on Windows anyway.
|
| I doubt many people are dual-booting on work computers
| and WSL really only benefits developers, which are most
| likely developing something on Linux (i.e. server linux)
| for work.
|
| Again, Windows is no longer the bread winner of Microsoft
| and desktop Linux is comparatively irrelevant to
| Microsoft considering it represents like 1% of the
| market. Both ChromeOS and macOS are more direct
| competitors to Windows.
|
| Why would they work to extinguish a non-competitor for a
| product that has taken a backseat from all of their other
| products? It just doesn't make sense.
| withinboredom wrote:
| > I doubt many people are dual-booting on work computers
| and WSL really only benefits developers, which are most
| likely developing something on Linux (i.e. server linux)
| for work.
|
| I was dual booting Linux. I find WSL perfect for this
| because I can basically have different distributions with
| a lot of common tools stored in a windows folder. It's
| perfect!
| ginko wrote:
| >Again, Windows is no longer the bread winner of
| Microsoft and desktop Linux is comparatively irrelevant
| to Microsoft considering it represents like 1% of the
| market.
|
| If it's not their breadwinner then they should port over
| their office suite and the Windows API to Linux.
| nvrspyx wrote:
| This isn't helping your argument. Why would they do that?
| Again, Linux is comparatively irrelevant at 1% market
| share. It's not worth the cost, which is why most games
| don't have Linux ports.
| dagw wrote:
| _If it 's not their breadwinner then they should port
| over their office suite and the Windows API to Linux._
|
| How much do you think it would cost to port Office to
| Linux? How many extra Office licenses do you think they'd
| sell? Given your estimates of these two numbers, do you
| think Microsoft would turn a profit off of Office for
| Linux.
|
| Anyway they've already 'ported' a decent subset of Office
| to Linux in form of Office365
| zaphar wrote:
| Why? I mean it's clearly Embrace. But Embrace and Extend
| are the goals of OSS. MS is a for profit company true.
| But OSS has never been anti-profit. The last E is
| problematic of course and MS has a history of going for
| Extinguish in the past. However I haven't seen any sign
| of that behavior in the current leadership and they've
| been doing their thing for a while now. You may not
| believe MS can change and you may not trust them. But
| that's a faith statement right now not a fact statement.
| smichel17 wrote:
| I've understood the second E to mean "...with our
| proprietary stuff". Building OSS on top of other OSS is
| still just Embrace.
|
| An example of Extend would be building features for WSL
| that only work in WSL, not Linux proper. So now people
| become dependent on the MS ecosystem, and lock-in begins;
| the lock-in is what enables the Extinguish phase.
| opencl wrote:
| They've done a little bit of that with DirectX for WSL2.
|
| https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directx-heart-
| linux/
| garaetjjte wrote:
| >An example of Extend would be building features for WSL
| that only work in WSL, not Linux proper.
|
| That thing already exists, DirectX is available only
| under WSL: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/wp-
| content/uploads/si...
|
| Extinguish phase is not clear though. (at least for now)
| to11mtm wrote:
| Hard to say. I think to some extent there would have to
| be something to 'extinguish'.
|
| At this point, 3d rendering is a bit of a crapshoot;
| Multi-platform vendors will likely have a pluggable
| rendering pipeline anyway (i.e. need to use DirectX for
| XBox, PS4/PS5 APIs, Metal for iOs, DirectX for Windows,
| maybe Vulkan if they developed on Linux or just want to
| make it easier to port later).
|
| If I reach in my head, perhaps some form of 'DirectAI'
| API could limit competition in some markets or force
| vendor lock-in.
|
| Otherwise, I think Microsoft is in a space where they
| seem to be pretty OK with; being the #2 in a lot of
| spaces is still profitable, with the benefit of less
| oversight regarding antitrust.
|
| The other place I -might- forsee Microsoft doing 'lock-
| in' is around their developer tooling. By that I mean,
| they have a lot of cool tech that is a PITA to deploy at
| scale... unless you use Azure. SignalR scaleout would be
| a prime example that comes to mind.
| bayindirh wrote:
| I think, Microsoft clearly understands that Linux is not
| going anywhere, but they can try to limit where it goes
| instead of trying to make it go away.
|
| Linux has two fronts: Server and Desktop. It's clearly
| won in server space, in some very important categories.
|
| But, what if Microsoft can make Windows attractive
| enough, so it can run Linux applications without the
| Linux desktop itself, and prevent developers from
| installing a bona fide distribution to their boxes
| alongside Windows? With this, they can
| - Add some proprietary extensions to WSL to keep some dev
| tools trapped - Double down on secure boot and
| key management, citing "We can run these applications
| anyway, where's the monopoly?" - Slow down
| adoption of desktop Linux installations
|
| Hence, push Linux to server space to reclaim the
| "creative/young" desktop space, and prevent them from
| becoming irrelevant, and pushing Linux to systems rooms
| of cloud, so it becomes something like "The real world"
| in Matrix (the movie)?
|
| Just give it a thought.
| aiisjustanif wrote:
| GitHub is still pretty independent of Microsoft.
| Internally it's a different pay structure, somewhat
| different employee benefits, finance decisions, and
| different leadership.
| Quillbert182 wrote:
| They also own npm, which they also haven't done anything
| with yet, but the potential is there.
| jaywalk wrote:
| Oh no, not the "potential!" Please, I had completely
| forgotten that Microsoft owned npm until reading your
| comment. There's no more "potential" there than any other
| product/service from any other company, and Microsoft has
| done absolutely nothing to indicate that they will screw
| with npm.
| flatiron wrote:
| I recently left Apple and my new company gave me a choice
| of windows or macOS as my device and I chose windows. I'm
| not really sure why. But I do have to say after not using
| windows for 10+ years it's come a long way. Wsl simply is
| amazing. Vscode works perfectly with it. The office apps
| are leaps and bounds better than there macOS counterparts.
| I certainly have never been a MS lover but I think they are
| much better now than their 90s reputation.
| binkHN wrote:
| They are also, very much, embracing Linux. More and more
| of Azure has Linux underpinnings and we'll see more
| integration of Linux in Windows, starting with WSLg.
| syshum wrote:
| Yes, but likely they will then "extend" Linux so if an
| dev is using WSL to develop a linux project you will need
| to install MS things on your production enviroment,
| likely in the NET Core world... I am sure this will
| happen with the full support the Linux Foundation whom
| they paid off. It will also come by default in Azure I am
| sure
|
| After they "extend" with MS open source then start to
| require just a few closed binaries, that is not a big
| deal right, for the functionality... see VSCode as an
| example of this in modern times. This likely will be a
| paid feature unless you use Azure where it will be
| free...
|
| and before long we enter the Extinguish phase
| smoldesu wrote:
| I don't really see that as much of a concern. If
| Microsoft announced plans for world domination tomorrow,
| all I'd need to change in my workflow is which fork of VS
| Code I'm using.
| gsnedders wrote:
| I mean a lot of the Azure stuff is realising that they
| could either: continue offering Windows Server only and
| likely miss out on a lot of potential customers but gain
| some sales of Windows Server, or start offering Linux in
| their cloud offering. Ultimately they decided to do the
| latter, and I'd bet that it's the more profitable option.
| horsawlarway wrote:
| I think the writing has been on the wall for a while now
| - Windows (server or otherwise) is no longer considered
| the money maker - now it's Office and Azure.
|
| Nadella was literally the top Cloud Computing executive
| at the company before he was picked for CEO.
|
| Replacing Balmer - who was _very_ pro-windows.
| jcelerier wrote:
| > It's their DNA now. All Microsoft Empire is built with
| crushing monopoly as their core value and driving force.
|
| it's literally the point of being a public company, how is
| that a surprise for anyone.
| tester34 wrote:
| >GitHub Copilot
|
| Github is Github
|
| Microsoft is Microsoft
|
| Aren't they? Github works heavily independently from MS
| bayindirh wrote:
| Eh, mostly.
|
| For CoPilot, you need a language model, where the current
| best one is made by OpenAI, which doesn't like to share
| its stuff.
|
| This is the same OpenAI, which got $1B from Microsoft,
| and gave commercial licenses to Microsoft to use GPT-3.
|
| Which is the company which also owns GitHub, and also has
| a platform like Azure, so it can just "lend" GPT-3 and
| some servers to train the said model on some code, which
| GitHub clearly has possession of.
|
| So, while they're different, and it's casually owned by
| the other, this ownership allows them to put one's code
| and other's GPT-3 access into "good" use.
|
| At the end of the day, public code is public, so license
| doesn't matter, eh?*
|
| *: CoPilot is trained on all public code containing GPL,
| AGPL and similar licenses which doesn't allow proprietary
| use, so it's another ball of hair.
| eagle2com wrote:
| Microsoft acquired github in 2018
| nvrspyx wrote:
| I think they recognize that, but are stating that
| Microsoft has taken a hands-off approach after acquiring
| GitHub and that GitHub mostly runs independent of
| Microsoft, similar to NPM.
| ReactiveJelly wrote:
| The existence of company DNA is a marketing fib.
|
| Every company aspires to be big enough to integrate the
| entire stack and kick out all their competition. Only a few
| manage to do it.
|
| There was never a new Microsoft. There was only Microsoft
| when they admitted they didn't have a stranglehold monopoly
| on PCs anymore.
|
| It's as basic a strategy as anything you'd find in Art of
| War: When you're #2, cooperate with #3 to take down #1.
| When you're #1, pull up the ladder so #2 and #3 can't use
| it.
| sangnoir wrote:
| > The existence of company DNA is a marketing fib.
|
| It isn't - company DNA doesn't always represent positive
| attributes.
|
| Company culture, incentive structure, priorities and
| skill-sets are all part of what's given the shorthand
| "company DNA" (and all are self-reinforcing/self-
| replicating. Google's DNA makes it exceptional at
| developing and scaling complex web services, but terrible
| at product longevity (except for the break-out hits), and
| terrible at consumer electronics. Apple is mostly the
| opposite. In spite of all their efforts, both companies
| struggle to be half as good as the other one in the areas
| outside of their core competency, because of their
| respective company DNA.
| yessirwhatever wrote:
| I suspect it that this is like the usual situation at MS,
| most employees think this strategy is dumb, but there's that
| one guy who's still living like it's 1991 and he's got good
| connections with management, so they let them run unchecked.
| That's the person who's coming up with such idiotic
| strategies.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| I'm not so sure. It's possible all the employees who
| thought this was dumb left before or shortly after Windows
| 8, so all that's left are people who don't care and the
| incompetent.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > and they weren't called in front of Congress recently over
| antitrust concerns
|
| Congress hasn't exactly been a hotbed of anti-trust activity
| over the past 40 years. I wouldn't take the absence of action
| here as anything particularly meaningful.
| smt88 wrote:
| I understand the temptation to root for New Microsoft, but we
| should all remember that large corporations are extremely
| powerful psychopaths. Anything they do that _seems_ ethical
| is self-serving, not part of a moral code that they will
| follow even when it hurts them.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I understand, but disagree with the sentiment... Companies
| are a collection of different people, with differing actual
| personalities, including agreements, disagreements and
| meaningful conflict and negotiations.
|
| To some extent it comes from leadership down, to another it
| starts at the ground floor. In the end, I think most MS
| movement has been self-serving, that doesn't make it
| inherently bad or good. I'm not liking the OS-shift, which
| seems to be following Apple/Google in a lot of ways.
|
| That doesn't mean everything MS does is poison.
| smt88 wrote:
| > _That doesn 't mean everything MS does is poison._
|
| Of course not. I love New Microsoft's products and
| customer/dev support. I vastly prefer Microsoft over any
| other FAAMG. I trust them more and think they're far less
| harmful than any of the others.
|
| All that said, I don't believe any of this is because of
| ethical principles. It's because they make more money by
| being "good" than by antagonizing their own society and
| customers.
|
| > _Companies are a collection of different people, with
| differing actual personalities, including agreements,
| disagreements and meaningful conflict and negotiations._
|
| Yes, but as we've seen throughout human history, morals
| disappear as soon as people are part of a large group.
| You can participate (and even lead!) while telling
| yourself that the things you're doing as a group are
| totally out of your control.
|
| For example, I have a Jewish friend at Facebook who is
| appalled by their enablement of conspiracy theories, but
| he still works at Facebook.
|
| If everyone at Facebook who objected to their company's
| behavior would find another job, I guarantee the behavior
| would change or the company would collapse.
|
| > _I think most MS movement has been self-serving, that
| doesn 't make it inherently bad or good_
|
| I guess it depends on your definition of "bad". I have
| never observed a large corporation take a huge hit to its
| bottom line in order to stand up for something moral. I
| don't think I ever will. To me, that's "bad" -- a group
| of people who exercise an enormous amount of power
| without feeling that they're personally responsible for
| the consequences. That's why I described it as
| psychopathy.
| Iv wrote:
| > Did they learn nothing from the antitrust cases of the 2000's
|
| They learnt that all they risk is a slap on the wrist a decade
| later, and a fee that's a drop in their profits.
| anothernewdude wrote:
| That's silly. Chrome has become so dominant that it'd be a good
| move on MS's part to help segment the browser market by
| supporting Firefox
| joncrane wrote:
| Isn't Google the single largest contributor to the Mozilla
| Foundation?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| No. The Mozilla Corporation is the largest contributor to
| the Mozilla Foundation, though most of their money comes
| from selling the default search rights to Google.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| That sounds like '"yes" but I don't like to admit it'.
|
| I mean their money comes from the bank account that
| others pay in to, but that's a stupid and irrelevant
| distinction ...
| sfink wrote:
| No, I think it was "yes but I want to be pedantic about
| it". If you had just said "Mozilla" the answer is an easy
| yes. But you made the mistake of specifying MoFo (as
| opposed to MoCo).
|
| That said, I work for Mozilla and in practice we're very
| independent. Our user base, small as it may be compared
| to the past, is still a valuable bargaining chip. We are
| still very much fighting for an open and accessible Web
| in the standards arena (where technical and philosophical
| arguments work well with the actual Google people doing
| the work, even if the outcome is not optimal for google
| the advertising juggernaut.)
|
| Opinions my own, can't speak for Moz,etc.
| LanceH wrote:
| His point is that Google is a customer, not a
| contributor.
| e3bc54b2 wrote:
| Which in this case is equivalent to 'if you owe 10k to
| Bank its your problem, but if you owe 10M its the bank's
| problem'.
|
| One way or another Mozilla relies on Google remaining its
| customer for vast majority of money, while Google being
| their biggest competitor who eats out ever more of
| Mozilla's market share every year, further reducing any
| reason for Google to remain their customer going forward.
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| They've had other customers in the past and present, and
| could have others in the future. Should they take less
| money to not take the money from Google?
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| If I didn't like to admit it, I wouldn't have clarified
| that most of the Mozilla Corporation's money comes from
| Google.
|
| As the other poster mentioned, there's a meaningful
| distinction between customer and contributor. If Google
| stopped buying the contract for the default search,
| someone else would buy it. Like Yahoo did in around
| ~2014. Or like various other search engines already do in
| other countries/languages.
| rocqua wrote:
| I've been wondering. What happens if Edge beats chrome?
| Chromium is developed by google, and used by Edge. Will
| google continue developing chromium just to have Microsoft
| reap the rewards. If not, is google going to abandon
| chromium? Will microsoft pick up the slack? If so, are they
| going to fork chromium and develop on the form, or are they
| going to work on the original repo? What about the chromium
| name / trademark.
|
| If this goes wrong, what is google going to think of open-
| source development. If the second biggest (I think) open
| source application turns out to have been a failure for the
| company backing it, what is that going to do to commercial
| open-source development?
|
| I find this a scary prospect.
| criley2 wrote:
| Desktop browsing is the minority and shrinking every year.
| Google will always have more Chrome users on Android than
| there are Windows devices in existence.
| toast0 wrote:
| If it goes well enough for Microsoft, I'd expect Google to
| change the license/stop publishing and Microsoft to fork
| from there.
|
| The point of the chromium name is to provide a name that's
| not the general product name. I haven't looked at the
| license, but I don't think Google can take that name back;
| but if they do, Microsoft would just change it to something
| else, no big deal.
|
| Google has already turned their back on open-source
| development; so much of Android isn't in AOSP, and I don't
| think it's coming back. Chrome so far has stayed open-
| source, but whenever it becomes inconvenient for that to
| stay, I expect it will. Such is corporate life.
| wubin wrote:
| I doubt MS wants that kind of segmentation if they themselves
| rely strongly on the Chromium project.
| ocdtrekkie wrote:
| I suspect Microsoft will modify their undocumented API that
| they have no obligation to maintain as-is so that it only
| accepts EXEs in Edge's program folder or something.
| tgtweak wrote:
| Just wait for those "store-only" versions of windows to grow in
| distribution, then Microsoft touting store policy for not
| allowing Firefox in the store...
| heavyset_go wrote:
| > _I kept thinking to myself "Microsoft is going to boot
| Firefox from Windows" before realizing that MS doesn't have
| that sort of power (compared to say Apple)._
|
| Actually, when it comes to Windows and macOS, Microsoft has
| about the same power as Apple does when it comes to limiting
| what software can and can't run on their operating systems.
|
| Defender on Windows works like Gatekeeper does on macOS.
| Defender gets to decide what runs or doesn't run on a Windows
| system, using a similar approach to Gatekeeper.
|
| Both Apple and Microsoft require developers to regularly buy
| certificates to sign the software they intend to distribute to
| macOS and Windows users, and they require developers to remain
| in good standing with either company. Unsigned software is
| treated as if it is radioactive by both operating systems, and
| macOS on M1 Macs goes one step further by deprecating unsigned
| binaries entirely.
|
| If Apple or Microsoft want to, they can revoke a developer's
| certificates, and any app that was signed with them will be
| prevented from running by Gatekeeper or Defender. They can also
| choose not to renew a developer's certificates, preventing apps
| from running when the certificates they were signed with
| expire.
|
| To 99.9% of users, apps signed with revoked or expired
| certificates will be portrayed as either being broken or
| malicious by macOS or Windows.
| Angostura wrote:
| > MS doesn't have that sort of power (compared to say Apple)
|
| That's an interesting question. I suppose Apple could refuse to
| sign the executable, which would make things tricky but could
| they actually boot Firefox from MacOS?
|
| I think not.
| cma wrote:
| Yes, remember this?
|
| > Apple has released a silent update for Mac users removing a
| vulnerable component in Zoom
|
| Removed not by antivirus you can disable, removed by an OS
| update.
| Angostura wrote:
| Do I remember Apple updating XProtect to remove a Zoom
| component that allowed attackers to potentially hijack
| users' webcams? I do. Zoom had installed a hidden web
| server on users' computers that was (a) exploitable and (b)
| not removed upon deletion of the app. As a result, users
| who had previously deleted Zoom might not even realize they
| were vulnerable to this potential attack.
|
| Zoom worked with Apple and updated the app hours later.
|
| You can kill XProtect if you want by disabling System
| Integrity Protection and modifying the malware signature
| file.
| orbital-decay wrote:
| Microsoft were doing this for ages... From the NT kernel to the
| shell. To stay above competition, they have tons of different
| undocumented APIs they keep for themselves to use, and don't
| guarantee it to exist or stay unchanged in future. In fact this
| is _the_ response. Nothing special about this particular one.
| Developers reverse engineer those, and try to rely on them, all
| the time.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Every OS and library has some form of undocumented/internal
| APIs that they don't want users of that library or OS to be
| relying upon.
|
| Hell, Linux even uses DRM (not the Direct Rendering Manager,
| Digital Rights Management) to check if your LKM is licensed
| properly to call those APIs. GPL-incompatible libraries only
| get to link to functions that are rough equivalents to
| syscalls.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Calling what you describe DRM is pretty deceptive. Can you
| get access to DRM-ed materials by promising to share them
| freely under an open license?
|
| That said I'm surprised by what you describe as I'm
| struggling to understand how that works -- you're saying
| the Linux kernel has a secret API, surely one can read the
| source and/or documentation and find the API details. Or
| are you saying calls to kernel APIs are cryptographically
| protected? Could you give details of what this system is
| called, thanks.
| icefo wrote:
| The zfsonlinux developers complained a while ago that
| some API they were using became GPL only and I think they
| had to write a wrapper in GPL to get around it.
|
| I'm on mobile so I can't give you more details but you
| can probably find more if you look in that direction
| vetinari wrote:
| It was API, not API key.
|
| Kernel is GPL, so only GPL modules can touch its internal
| APIs. For non-derived works, there is a subset of APIs,
| that are declared to be fine if used by non-GPL code. ZFS
| had a problem, where they were using something that
| should not be used (fp in kernel), which got removed and
| they had to find a replacement, which was GPL-only.
|
| It is also necessary to say, that this is honor-based.
| Any module declares its license and the linker either
| allows or not allows resolving a symbol. There are no
| checks whether the module is really GPL or not, it is to
| show intent, and if you want to cheat, you must do it
| willfully, not by accident.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| > ZFS had a problem, where they were using something that
| should not be used (fp in kernel), which got removed and
| they had to find a replacement, which was GPL-only.
|
| All that symbol did was tell the kernel to save the fpu
| registers.
|
| It's dishonorable _of the relevant kernel developers_ to
| pretend that 's something relevant to the GPL.
| vetinari wrote:
| It was more complicated than that. Some architectures do
| not support that.
|
| And what's more pressing is, that it is an internal
| implementation details. Preserving it for ZFS would mean
| that they have to keep internal implementation detail for
| an external project, that does not care to cooperate!
|
| These two symbols were obsolete for almost two decades.
| Should they keep them just for ZFS? Or should ZFS switch?
| If it were GPL project, or better, part of the kernel, it
| would be already fixed and everyone would go on with
| their lives.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| There were two sets of exports. __kernel_fpu_begin/end
| and kernel_fpu_begin/end.
|
| The only meaningful difference was that one was marked
| GPL and the other wasn't.
|
| Removing the one with __ can be justified pretty easily.
|
| Insisting that the ones they kept should still be marked
| 'GPL' is where it gets ridiculous. Going in and out of
| FPU mode is not something that makes your code derivative
| of the kernel code.
| pseudalopex wrote:
| What documentation said they shouldn't use it?
| vetinari wrote:
| > In other words: it's still very much a special case,
| and if the question was "can I just use FP in the kernel"
| then the answer is still a resounding NO, since other
| architectures may not support it AT ALL.
|
| Linus Torvalds, Mon, 10 Mar 2003 20:12:34 GMT
| blibble wrote:
| it seems quite clear ZFS is not a derived work of the
| Linux kernel, given it was developed for and extracted
| from Solaris, and that same code works on FreeBSD and
| Illumunos
| vetinari wrote:
| Well, obviously, since it is not derived work, how would
| it know how to interface with internal symbols and use
| internal defines of the linux kernel?
|
| It would not... unless it becomes derived work.
| blendergeek wrote:
| Under the GPL, a "combined work" must also be distributed
| under the GPL. Given that use of certain kernel APIs
| requires the inclusion of large GPL'd header files, the
| kernel developers require that any modules that include
| this GPL'd code be also released under the GPL.
|
| In order to make it more difficult for developers of
| kernels modules that break the law by running roughshod
| over the GPL, the kernel developers decided to only make
| these available to modules that _claim_ to be under the
| GPL [10]. Please note that module developers can still
| easily distribute modules that use the "GPL only" APIs
| but they have to explicitly state that they are using GPL
| only code (thereby signalling that any copyright
| infringement is willful).
|
| Calling this "DRM" seems a little disingenuous to me.
| Anybody can _legally_ remove these protections from their
| own kernels without any legal repercussions. Removing DRM
| protections (in the USA) is a felony that carries up to
| five years in prison. DRM is intentionally obfuscated and
| poorly documented. The kernel makes its license clear and
| obvious.
|
| [0] https://lwn.net/Articles/154602/
| boomboomsubban wrote:
| >that MS doesn't have that sort of power (compared to say
| Apple).
|
| They could mark the install executable as malicious in Windows
| Defender.
| pbhjpbhj wrote:
| Or the domain as having PUP so people visiting get a warning
| and hoops to jump through.
| bogwog wrote:
| Which is similar to what Apple does for MacOS (and Google for
| Android).
|
| They haven't prevented people from installing untaxed
| software, but they have made it a scary and difficult process
| for the average user, and made it very difficult for anyone
| to sell software without giving Apple/Google a cut.
| cma wrote:
| And they said desktop signing was only for security, then
| blocked Epic's desktop apps for an iOS non-security
| business dispute.
| jonnycomputer wrote:
| I can install apps on Mac that aren't in the store.
| [deleted]
| causi wrote:
| _While Microsoft offers a method to switch default browsers on
| Windows 10, it's more cumbersome than the simple one-click
| process to switch to Edge._
|
| Where the hell are the regulators who handed out billion dollar
| fines just for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows?
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| Where were they when AT&T joined all of the Baby Bells back
| together? It was ok because the competitive landscape changed
| during the decades in which AT&T was broken up. Same here.
| Microsoft has nowhere near the power over general computing
| that it once had. What they did with IE back in the day was
| only a problem because of their dominant market position.
| Others doing the same from a minority market position would
| have been fine. Now that the majority of devices are running
| something other than Windows, it's more difficult to claim
| Microsoft dominates the market unless you define the market
| very narrowly, in which case, lots of other companies would
| also be in trouble.
| bogwog wrote:
| The only thing that changed was that other companies started
| doing the same evil stuff Microsoft was doing when they got
| in trouble, except instead of regulators going after those
| other companies too, they've... idk, disappeared?
|
| So in a weird way, I agree that it's unfair that Microsoft
| can't do unfair things while all the other companies are
| doing unfair things. That puts them at a competitive
| disadvantage!
|
| They've been shy about it because of their history, but I
| predict Microsoft will eventually lock Windows down in the
| same way Apple and Google lock down their operating systems.
| Or, knowing Microsoft, they'll probably take it as far as
| they possibly can.
| CivBase wrote:
| > Others doing the same from a minority market position would
| have been fine.
|
| So where's the interest in slapping billion dollar fines on
| Google for bundling Chrome and Google Search with Android?
| They own the majority market share for both mobile operating
| systems, web browsers, _and_ search engines.
|
| I guess they probably get away with it because they bundle it
| with Google Play Services instead of Android, but you could
| make an argument that GPS is fundamentally a part of Android
| given it is necessary to provide the features generally
| associated with the OS. It's not rock-solid, but it's at
| least a better argument than any of the other big-tech
| monopoly cases the US has been pursuing.
| sealeck wrote:
| The "majority of devices" if you count IoT, etc. However,
| Windows has market dominance in desktop computing.
| garaetjjte wrote:
| In what world Windows is in minority market position? It is
| _de facto_ desktop OS.
| bserge wrote:
| Working for Microsoft or retired.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| They got discouraged after the Bush years when all their
| antitrust actions were undermined.
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| You mean the same regulators who stripped the initial remedy of
| its teeth and essentially slapped MS on the wrist?
| jeroenhd wrote:
| Those regulators have let Apple enforce Safari for years, I
| don't think they care about browsers like they used to.
| yborg wrote:
| Enforce what? My default is set to Firefox on macOS, took one
| click.
| Sander_Marechal wrote:
| They enforce Safari on iOS, not on macOS
| SimeVidas wrote:
| Apple enforces WebKit, not Safari. You can set Firefox as
| default on iOS. The only problem is that it's WebKit-
| based.
| arp242 wrote:
| This kind of stuff has been going on for _years_ as well; it 's
| not something new. I don't normally use Windows, but a few
| years ago when I got a new ThinkPad I figured I'd have a
| looksie around with the pre-installed Windows 10 just to see
| what it's like out of curiosity since I never used Windows 8 or
| 10, and it displayed all sorts of stuff trying to force Edge on
| people, including "ads" that just pop up; see [1].
|
| I'm not sure what I find more objectionable: that they're
| trying to push Edge so hard, or that they feel this is _so
| important_ to pop up unprompted notifications for it
| distracting people from the actual work they 're doing. I've
| been using Linux or BSD for a very long time for the simple
| pragmatical reason it just works better for me, and this sort
| of user-hostile behaviour only strengthened that.
|
| The difference, I suppose, is that IE/Edge doesn't have the
| position it had in the past with >95% market share. Both macOS
| and mobile platforms removed a lot of teeth from Microsoft
| compared to the early/mid-2000s. Still, the actual _behaviour_
| is worse, even if the effects are less bad.
|
| [1]: https://www.arp242.net/browsers-conflict-interest.html
| krzyzanowskim wrote:
| let's not forget 2001 antitrust law case triggered by Internet
| Explorer itself.
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_Cor....
|
| Everything old is new again.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| Unfortunately the US kind of has forgotten. The Bush
| administration took power and undermined all that anti-trust
| stuff and it lay forgotten for most of 20 years. The Biden
| administration is picking up some of it now.
| metalliqaz wrote:
| except now the US' will to prosecute antitrust is essentially
| dead
|
| the land of corporate power
| AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
| Honestly its will wasn't even that strong back then, hence
| the slap on the wrist settlement on appeal.
| dataflow wrote:
| They probably look at their market share and decide they're not
| a monopoly anymore.
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